After holding the crown for the most visited social media website for so many years, Facebook’s core audience have jumped ship, crippling it’s business along with its appeal.
Even Facebook has admitted to the teen problem, stating in their annual 10k report that they “believe that some of our users, particularly our younger users, are aware of and actively engaging with other products and services similar to, or as a substitute for, Facebook.”
So, the question is, why is Facebook becoming more and more unpopular to teens? And where are most teens migrating away from Facebook to?
According to 18 year old liberal arts Bucks student, Ariella Lungin, she agrees that the social media site is unexciting and that “people make it boring, because all they do is complain…it doesn’t feel like social media anymore.”
It seems to be that more teens are turning to popular apps or social media sites such as Snapchat, Vine, Instagram, and Tumblr.
According to Roiworld’s website, “one in five teens (19 percent) with a Facebook profile has either abandoned the site or visits it less than they did a year ago.”
On istrategylabs.com reports that teens ranging from ages 13-17 on Facebook have declined 25.3 percent over the last 3 years. Or perhaps the decline of usage could also be contributed to the amount of “So many parents and grannies that seem, creepily, to be all over Facebook these days” said Businessweekly.com.
According to Businessweekly.com, “teens make up an $819 billion consumer segment, and the social media chatter about brands—positive or negative—is an increasingly large influence on their purchasing
decisions.
Just over half of all teens polled for the research (53 percent for female teens and 52 percent for teenage males) said social media affects their overall purchasing decisions, a trend that has gained strength in recent quarters.”
Vincenzo Fevola, an undecided 20 year old student admits the only reason he continues to log onto Facebook is to “try to pass time” while Tina Clark, a communications major says the social site is “only good for games”.
Clark also adds that “there’s no originality anymore, people used to post original literature but now they repost or share something someone else already said.” She also continued to say that she’s “so tired of the news being on Facebook nowadays, if I wanted to hear about it I can simply turn on the television and watch it, sorry Zuckerberg.”
Danielle Selko, a 22 year old psychology major at Bucks could really care less “about what everybody is doing at every moment.” Sharing a similar viewpoint is 20 year-old business administration major Nikki Raffle who’s fed up with Facebook; seeing “the same things every day, same statuses all the time.”
Facebook is becoming an old fad, Kayla Golden, a criminal justice major at Bucks says “it’s not as popular anymore. Everyone is on it, but they don’t do anything on the site. It seems to me that Facebook is more popular amongst middle schoolers…my friends’ younger sister has a Facebook, and is on it all the time.”
Many young people, including the students at Bucks interviewed, seemed to use the social media site as a utility. Facebook has become more like an email account – everyone has one, we check it time to time, but no one really takes the time to scroll and look through each email received.
As a result of the downfall of young Facebook users, many fear that the social media site could repeat history in the same way Myspace had in the recent years. Luckily, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, also owns the $5.4 billion social app, Instagram.