Few Facebook Users Share Daily, Survey Says

Small Portion of Site's 1.2 Billion Users Share Details Every Day, According to Pew Study

A new Pew Research survey on Facebook Inc. FB +2.31% 's users, released 10 years after the social network's founding, sheds new light on how relationships are changing in the age of social media.

While there are more people than ever using Facebook, only a small percentage of users are sharing details about their lives every day.

Of Facebook's more than 1.2 billion users, only 10% update their status daily, while only 4% update it more than once a day, according to the Pew survey. About 15% of users comment on photos more than once a day.

The survey suggests that a significant portion of Facebook is a one-way conversation buoyed by Internet voyeurs who relish the ability to document their lives with their friends or the public.

Engagement, or the amount of time each user spends on Facebook, has become a key metric for investors because it is directly tied to the number of ads Facebook can sell. Each action taken by Facebook users equals another data point for Facebook. Analysts say Facebook's future business success relies on its ability to leverage that data with more accuracy as its user growth slows.Those super sharers are annoying some users, according to the survey. Some 36% said they disliked it when people share "too much information about themselves."

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg in Washington, on Sept. 18, 2013. Reuters

Facebook doesn't disclose exactly how users are interacting with the site, other than whether they used the service daily or not. Last week, the company said daily active users were up 22% year-over-year. Facebook also said average revenue per user increased 24% from the third quarter to $2.14.

To be sure, even before the advent of online social networks, there were people who shared too much, and others who kept to themselves. And just like in the real world, all of those people play an important role in social circles. Of the respondents, 44% said they click on the "like" button on content posted by their friends. Even that kind of low-level sharing is invaluable, Facebook says.The Pew study was based on telephone interviews in the fall of last year with 1,802 adults, all of whom were 18 or older.

The Pew survey reported a quarter of adults say they share nothing at all on Facebook. But even those users are still shown lucrative advertising needed to keep the social network profitable.

The survey also shows how technology has allowed social networks to grow in size, beyond anything that would have been possible in the pre-social media age.

The average adult on Facebook, according to the study, has 338 friends. That number may not be surprising today, in an age when private citizens can have Twitter TWTR -0.15% followers in the tens of thousands, but it underscores a radical idea. A decade ago, the concept of being in constant touch with hundreds of friends would have seemed impossible, if not incredibly annoying. Now, it seems normal.

As much as Facebook has become a routine part of the daily lives of hundreds of millions of people, the Pew study shows there is still significant unease among users.

Of those interviewed, 27% said they disliked "other people seeing posts or comments you didn't mean for them to see." Others felt pressure to get "likes" and were "tempted" to share too much information.

For Facebook to achieve its goal of becoming a utility that connects the world, one challenge will be convincing a higher percentage of the population to feel comfortable about sharing ever more intimate details about their lives.