As more young people across the country have started to either use Facebook less or completely abandon it, St. Edward’s students are staying with the social network although their use since joining has decreased.

According to a survey taken by Hilltop Views, 57 percent of students have decreased their use of Facebook since joining.

When asked why their use has decreased, students had a wide range of answers from just being busy to being sick of the unnecessary information popping up in their news feed.

“Life gets busier as I get older and social media isn’t as important as other things in life,” freshman Jaclyn Billie said.

Senior Kasey Sanchez has a different theory on why people are fleeing from Facebook.

“The reason people hate Facebook is because the app is really crappy,” Sanchez said. “If they had a better app I’m sure that more people would use it.”

There was a common theme in the survey respondents’ comments— Facebook has become apart of the norm of life. This has made the social network seem boring when students browsing the site.

“I tend to get bored going through the feed after awhile, it doesn’t entertain me for hours like other people,” freshman Jerusalen Garcia-Jordan said. “I need something that will keep my brain engaged.”

A study conducted by Piper Jaffray has also shown that young people are using Facebook less, but their reasoning was that they do not want to share a social network with their parents.

While many feel that Facebook has been taken over by older users, students at St. Edward’s do not believe that’s the case. In the Hilltop Views survey 58 percent did not agree that parents have taken control of Facebook.

Despite this, students have flocked to other social networks like Twitter and Instagram, which is owned by Facebook. Both of these networks are the top used social sites students use at St. Edward’s.

All social networks thrive on their users sharing various items from their personal lives or random things found online, but many believe that some are sharing too much, especially personal details about users’ lives.

“A lot of people update every five seconds, ‘Hey! I’m having pizza!’ ‘Hey look I’m arguing with my wife!'” freshman Jonathan Edwards Jr said. “The age of personal information kind of left us where everybody knows what everybody is doing.”

Overwhelmingly students use Facebook with about 96 percent having accounts, according to our survey. In today’s world, it is rare to find a college aged student not on Facebook, but there are a few at St. Edward’s like Edwards who has not joined. Edwards has never felt the need to join Facebook because he sees everyone that he hangs out with everyday. There’s another reason Edwards will not be joining Facebook— his future job.

“I want to be a government employee so that’s one less background check that they have to check out when I go apply,” he said.

This generation may be in trouble when it comes to finding a job because of what they have posted on to their social network profiles.

“Once you put something out on the internet it’s there forever— you can’t take it back,” Edwards said. “Some people don’t consider that when they’re young and when they start applying for jobs; employers are checking their Facebook pages.”

Edwards has a word of caution for his fellow students about social media.

“It’s just one of those things you have to be careful with,” he said. “It’s certainly going to play a big part in any path you choose in life. It will come up.”