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Survey: Most Americans Take Breaks From Facebook

By Melony Roy

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) - Have you ever taken "a break" from Facebook? If so, you are not alone, and in the majority according to a new survey.

The Pew Research Center released the survey Tuesday, which may alarm the folks over at Facebook.

"There have been a lot of press articles recently about people doing things like getting tired of Facebook or giving Facebook up for lent and so what we wanted to do was attach some numbers to that and see if those anecdotal stories had any basis in fact," says Research associate at the Pew Center, Aaron Smith

Over three days in December, Pew reached 1,006 adults in the United States by phone. Some 860 of them use the Internet and 525 use Facebook. Those 525 were asked if they if they voluntarily took a break from Facebook for an extended amount of time and the majority -- 61% -- said yes.

There were various reasons for these breaks.

"The first was time stressors so people saying that they got too busy, the other sort of involved the things their friends were doing - drama or negativity or conflict among their friends and there were other people who just said they were spending too much time on the site," adds Smith..

The Pew study also found that Facebook users were not overly concerned about privacy policies and 39% said they'd never taken a break.

Have you ever taken a break from Facebook? Leave a comment.

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