Internal Facebook researchers have found that issues of addiction-like problematic use affect about 12.5 percent — or every 1 in 8 — of the app's 2.9 billion users, amounting to more than 360 million people, The Wall Street Journal reports. Such compulsive social media abuse is then said to harm users' sleep, work, parenting, or relationships.
What's more, these usage patterns — which "mirror what is popularly known as internet addiction" — were "perceived by users to be worse on Facebook than any other major social media platform," writes the Journal. Researchers estimated approximately 10 percent of U.S. users (one of Facebook's "most lucrative markets") engage in this behavior, while about 25 percent of users are doing the same in the Philippines and India, the "company's largest market."
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