And that, friends, is my longest post title ever.

Hypothesis

Facebook usage is in decline as evidenced by a sharp decline in the number of birthday wishes received this year.

Method

Visit Facebook Activity Log, copy + paste from top to bottom of “Others’ Posts To Your Timeline” from approximately February 14-17 (we can assume a few belated or coming in under the wire [I wrote this with two hours remaining in my big day] not accounted for in my data this year), copy into a spreadsheet, count rows, and subtract an arbitrary few for any posts that didn’t appear to be about birthday (at a glance) and for date headers. VERY SCIENTIFIC.

Results

The following chart displays the number of birthday wishes received per year. It’s worth noting my number of “Friends” is currently around 1100, a maximum.

Other Data Considered

I was hopeful other data would correlate to the above. I overlaid valuations from when the company was private, valuations now that the company is public, and data on the percent of US Americans who are “users.” None of it supported my belief. The valuations have grown linearly since 2013 with a small dip in 2019 and usage has remained relatively steady at around 60% with only a fraction of a percent drop in the past year.

Conclusion

I receive fewer people wishing me happy birthday in years following marriages ?

In all seriousness, or as serious as an incredibly unscientific study can get, I still firmly believe Facebook is dying, or at least amongst my peers. But shit, even demographic data doesn’t agree with me! I don’t know… Nobody seems to post anymore and folks seem to be very blasé on the subject; I often hear accounts are only being kept for single-sign-on or event coordination or because they’re too lazy to remove them. Perhaps the demographic data doesn’t define “usage” or “users” very well?

I’ve posted less over the past two years, therefore the algorithms don’t throw me in as many news feeds for noticing? I could dig into this data, but I probably don’t need to because I know I’ve been posting less.

Anyway, it was a great birthday. Rebecca surprised me in bed with a cake and candles (missed my age by one), had a cake and coffee breakfast, a little brunch out, art museum for a rad Mt. St. Helens exhibit, an amazing dinner at a Peruvian place a minute from home, and if we’re lucky we’ll both be in bed by 10!