The evolution of the physical parameters of magnetic bright points ( MBPs ) located in the quiet Sun ( mainly in the interwork ) during their lifetime is studied . First we concentrate on the detailed description of the magnetic field evolution of three MBPs . This reveals that individual features follow different , generally complex , and rather dynamic scenarios of evolution . Next we apply statistical methods on roughly 200 observed MBP evolutionary tracks . MBPs are found to be formed by the strengthening of an equipartition field patch , which initially exhibits a moderate downflow . During the evolution , strong downdrafts with an average velocity of 2.4 km/s set in . These flows , taken together with the concurrent strengthening of the field , suggest that we are witnessing the occurrence of convective collapses in these features , although only 30 % of them reach kG field strengths . This fraction might turn out to be larger when the new 4 m class solar telescopes are operational as observations of MBPs with current state of the art instrumentation could still be suffering from resolution limitations . Finally , when the bright point disappears ( although the magnetic field often continues to exist ) the magnetic field strength has dropped to the equipartition level and is generally somewhat weaker than at the beginning of the MBP ’ s evolution . Also , only relatively weak downflows are found on average at this stage of the evolution . Only 16 % of the features display upflows at the time that the field weakens , or the MBP disappears . This speaks either for a very fast evolving dynamic process at the end of the lifetime , which could not be temporally resolved , or against strong upflows as the cause of the weakening of the field of these magnetic elements , as has been proposed based on simulation results . Noteworthy is that in about 10 % of the cases we observe in the vicinity of the downflows small-scale strong ( exceeding 2 km/s ) intergranular upflows related spatially and temporally to these downflows . The paper is complemented by a detailed discussion of aspects regarding the applied methods , the complementary literature and in depth analysis of parameters like magnetic field strength and velocity distributions . An important difference to magnetic elements and associated bright structures in active region plage is that most of the quiet Sun bright points display significant downflows over a large fraction of their lifetime ( i.e. , in more than 46 % of time instances/measurements they show downflows exceeding 1 km/s ) .