Young people may be more connected to social networks than any other demographic, but that doesn’t mean they’re not willing to deactivate their social media accounts if their privacy continues to be violated. According to a recent report from USA Network, 75% of young people said they were “somewhat likely” to deactivate their social media accounts if major beaches of their privacy continued, with 23% saying they were “highly likely” to deactivate them. 

With all of the revelations of data snooping and privacy violations taking place at the hands of government agencies and clandestine hacker groups, a new report suggests young people are having buyer’s remorse regarding the amount of social media accounts they’ve poured their life details into. In a surprisingly interesting report released this week (oddly) by USA Network, survey data shows that “if they could start fresh” 55 percent of young people would eschew social media entirely. Additionally, if major breaches of their privacy were to continue, 75 percent of young people said they were at least “somewhat likely” to deactivate their personal social media accounts with 23 percent saying they were “highly likely” to do so. Young Americans’ sense of privacy online has been so violated that most of them believe that it’s safer to store their personal data in a box than in the Cloud. Indeed, the survey said that physical filing systems were actually listed as the “most trusted” personal data storage method for young people.