RIP Facebook in 2017?

People it seem, have a love/hate relationship with Facebook. Some love it, some hate it, and some may admit that they have a slight addiction and that they hate to love it. You can’t go very far without hearing about someone on Facebook, seeing someone on Facebook, or running into someone who is constantly scanning their newsfeed on Facebook. Some even believe that Facebook is one of the great epidemics of the 21st century and that it is ruining the younger (and older) generation. Let’s face it – sometimes, Facebook seems to do more harm than good – can you honestly say you’ve never gotten jealous over something that a “friend” posted?

Regardless of how you may feel toward the social media giant, there are some out there who think Facebook may be pushing up daisies within the next few years. And this isn’t just coming from people off of the street – some researchers that hail from Princeton have studied Facebook and it appears to them that it is following a trend much like the bubonic plague. Basically, what they’re saying is that if Facebook follows the path of the plague, it will eventually fizzle away as people become immune to it.

What Will A World Without Facebook Look Like?

Their research has even been published, and the following quote is a summation of their findings:

“Ideas, like diseases, have been shown to spread infectiously between people before eventually dying out, and have been successfully described with epidemiological models… Ideas are spread through communicative contact between different people who share ideas with each other. Idea manifesters ultimately lose interest with the idea and no longer manifest the idea, which can be thought of as the gain of ‘immunity’ to the idea.”

Their findings go on to state that Facebook might lose 80% of their users by the year 2017 if their predictions hold true.

As someone who has regularly used Facebook since its inception, it’s hard for me to imagine a world without it. I’d have to imagine that it would be a world where more people actually interacted with each other, though, and that’s never a bad thing. While it has undoubtedly made communication a lot easier with those around the world, it’s also made it all the more difficult to communicate with those who remain closest to us.

What do you think? Will Facebook meet its maker in your lifetime?

[Image via Blottr]

SOURCE: http://gizmodo.com/facebook-could-die-out-like-an-infectious-disease-by-20-1507216751