Nearly 1 out of 10 Americans have deleted their Facebook account over privacy concerns, study says

AP

• 9% of Americans say they have deleted their Facebook account altogether over privacy concerns, according to a new study.
• 35% say they're using Facebook less than they used to.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in his testimony this week in Washington that there wasn't a "meaningful" number of people who are deleting Facebook in the wake of revelations that data firms like Cambridge Analytica were able to steal personal information from millions of users.

But this seems unlikely, given the huge amount of press coverage. The hashtag "#DeleteFacebook" has trended, and you may even personally know people who zapped their Facebook account.

So Carolina Milanesi and technology research group Techpinions decided to survey a representative sample of 1,000 Americans about their feelings about the social networking giant.

Here are the big takeaways:

• 17% of Americans have deleted the Facebook app from their phone over privacy concerns.
• 35% say they're using Facebook less than they used to over the privacy issue.
• 9% have deleted their Facebook account altogether.
• 39% of Americans are "very aware" and 37% say they're "somewhat aware" of the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

Of course, these are self-reported numbers, and there may be a gap between people who say they deleted their Facebook and those who actually did.

Milanesi writes that lower engagement is actually the real risk for Facebook, not necessarily people deleting their accounts.

According to the study, 2 out of 5 people surveyed who had been on Facebook for over 7 years wanted it to "go back to how it was." Facebook's main product hasn't changed that much in recent years, so perhaps, like Zuckerberg, they're reminiscing about a time where it was run out of a Harvard dorm room and the key feature was the "poke."

You can read the entire Techpinions writeup of the survey here.