Now that everyone (and their mother) is on Facebook, some of the site’s first users are beginning to step away

Facebook fatigue has hit college students.

NYU senior Shalin Patel, 21, plans to deactivate his account while he applies to medical school. Patel says that he uses Facebook a few times a week, but mostly to talk to acquaintances. “A lot of my close friends I call and text message, even e-mail,” he says. “I know I’m going to give it up eventually. I don’t even need it. I’m just on it to be on it.”

Since 2004, Generation Y college students have chatted, procrastinated and broken up on Facebook. So much that five years later, some students have lost interest in the site, deactivated their accounts, and moved on.

Beyond the “Novelty Effect”

The “novelty effect” of Facebook has worn off. “Whenever a new medium emerges, people get fascinated, but after a couple of years it drops off,” says JoEllen Fisherkeller, an NYU associate professor of culture and communication. “People realize the limitations of the medium.”

While proof for declining Facebook use is anecdotal, companies that monitor Web site traffic have recently reported drops. Ofcom, a media regulator in the UK, reported that the number of 15 to 24-year-olds in Britain who use social networks, including Facebook, decreased to 50 percent in 2009 from 55 percent in 2008. While that’s not a mass departure, a five percent decline represents millions of young people who have found something else to do.

In addition, Gen-Y no longer makes up the largest group of social network users. Internet traffic research firm Hitwise reported in June that in 2009, 18 to 24-year-olds made up 19 percent of visits to Facebook, down from 38 percent in 2008. The company opened access to the site to people other than college students in 2006. Now the largest user demographic is 35 years old and older, according to information posted on the Facebook blog.

Still Hanging on

Besides those who have officially quit Facebook, there are the would-be quitters, people who still use Facebook but resent the site’s dominance of social networking and their own dependence on it.

Danielle Walsh, 20, an NYU student, deactivated her account for two weeks this summer just for a little privacy. She says that she liked distance from old friends and acquaintances. “People fall out of touch for a reason,” she says. “Also, it’s frustrating to get a newsfeed about someone who you had a romantic past with.”

After friends mocked her for deactivating her account, she rejoined. “It’s a necessity in college,” she says. “People are lazy; it’s a tool to invite people to parties and clubs. And it knits the social fabric.” Walsh said she planned to deactivate her account after graduation. “But who knows,” she adds. “Maybe I won’t.”

Textbooks and Facebook

College students have always had ambivalent feelings toward Facebook and the people on it, according to Katherine Wartman, a Ph.D candidate at Boston College and coauthor of the book “Online Social Networking on Campus: Understanding What Matters in Student Culture.” “They’ve always had a love-hate relationship with it,” she says. “Getting frustrated with people is part of campus culture. I think its not Facebook but college students.”

However, Wartman said that after Facebook mainstreamed and became popular with older generations, college students lost control of what once was a niche network. “Facebook started in college,” she says. “For many students, quitting would mean losing connection to college culture. It’s so ingrained now. That’s why it’s hard to step away.”

Click here to listen to an audio story on Facebook Fatigue by Richard Grey at The Guardian