Why running Facebook on Google Chrome uses so much memory?

When I log into Facebook on Google Chrome, my machine heats up, exhaust fans begin to run at super high speed and these are some technical results- enter image description here

Running a single website, facebook specifically (no other webpage creates this problem), is requiring consistently 80% CPU and around 2.6 GB of RAM. Sometimes CPU usage rises upto even 95%.

Why is this happening?Why is a light job like running a web page (specifically Facebook) creating this issue?


Complementing what Damon said about the reasons for heavy loading due to advertisements and tracking, actualy i'm using some 'tricks' to minimize the problem with Facebook and other heavy sites.


  • AdGuard extension: Blocks all types of ads on all web pages, even on Facebook

  • AdBlock has many adBlockKillers, but does the same


  • Open Google Chrome on incognito mode using Ctrl + Shift + N keys

  • Incognito mode not save the history, but for me, in the most part of the time it's unnecessary.


If you want use both (I recommend) you need enable AdGuard in Incognito Mode:

  1. On Chrome open Menu ( three lines on the right side)
  2. Go to More tools and then Extensions
  3. To turn the extension on, check the box. To turn off an extension, uncheck the enabled box.

I've seen the same sort of issue on my pc with Chrome & Facebook. Almost never see the problem with any other page. I operate with a dozen or so tabs always open, multitasking. I find that this even happens with a freshly-loaded Facebook page, left idle for a long period of time (like overnight, after I've gone to sleep).

I've used "Process Explorer", a replacement for Task Manager (actually available from Microsoft) for years. Its advantage is...instead of giving just one listing for each program...you get individual listings for each process. This means, for instance, you can have a dozen (or more) for Chrome. It also allows you to "kill" individual processes.

enter image description here

My workaround (not really a solution) is to find the process in ProcessExplorer using the largest amount of memory (I sort the processes by amount of memory being used)...and kill it. This "kills" the facebook page (gives you a blank white "page died" window in that tab) without killing Chrome entirely, and releases the massive amount of memory FB had locked down...letting you reload FB. As you can see in this pic, FB is already using 700+megs...and I've had it open less than 30 minutes. If I leave it alone long enough, that number will climb 'til it's using every bit of available memory. I typically have to kill FB every 2-3 hours.

UPDATE: Here's what it looks like after I left a freshly loaded instance of Facebook open and untouched over the weekend (3 days). While it's like that, pages are sluggish as heck to load, anything & everything on the computer is dog-slow. Killing that process that's taking up 2.5gb of memory...instantly brings everything back to life. enter image description here