Facebook has come a long way from being Mark Zuckerberg’s dorm room project to becoming the world’s largest social media platform.
However, over the course of just five years, technology has already changed, and more social media platforms rose up. This includes the likes of Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, Musically, and more.
As the younger generation proves that they are the easiest to adapt to any technological change, this leaves Facebook a pretty old platform for the youngsters nowadays.
According to Bianca Bosker from Huffington Post , she has interviewed multiple 13- to 16-year-olds and she found out that majority of them do not use Facebook anymore.
One of the girls she interviewed told her that Facebook feels “like the mom and dad version of Instagram and Twitter.”
Now, Instagram is the most important platform for teens, according to a survey conducted by Piper Jaffray. The survey shows that Instagram is now the top social media platform, and it has already surpassed Facebook. Twitter came in third. This was far-fetched from the statistics from a year and a half ago which showed that teens favor Facebook as their favorite social media site.
In just two years, the sharing patterns of teens in Facebook has also declined from 42 to 23 percent, but Twitter is growing as a sharing platform. Instagram grew as well. But what teens do not quite understand is that they were “leaving Facebook for Facebook,” according to Bosker.
Since Instagram is now owned by Facebook, they are basically under one umbrella. During the past years, Facebook has expanded their empire from being just a solo social media platform to becoming a mother ship of smaller social media sites. Twitter did the same thing when they bought Vine.
Meanwhile, Daily Dot tried to dig deep in as to why teens are leaving Facebook. Nico Lang did an experiment with his 16-year-old “cool” brother to understand why Facebook is not hip anymore.
Eric Lang, Nico Lang’s younger brother, is not particularly a fan of social media networks.
“People don’t have to hang out with their friends,” he said. “They can just see what they’re doing. … I prefer actually talking to people. I would rather get their number than be friends on Facebook, where you have a 100 friends you never talk to. It’s a meaningless friendship.”
However, even though Eric seemed to be disappointed with how the term “Friend” is evolving, he acknowledged the possibility that Facebook “has become another extension of the high school popularity contest.”
“The more friends you have, the cooler you seem.”
Eric also validates the data in the survey when he said that “newer kids” are more inclined to use Twitter and Instagram because it seems “like adults are on Facebook.”
Eric said that parents do not easily transition from Facebook to Twitter to Instagram, because according to him, “a lot of people stay in their comfort zone.”
“It’s easier for teens to switch over because they’re still in their exploratory phase, but for parents, they’re done exploring. They’re good.”
Former Facebook CFO David Ebersman agrees to this notion. Parents initially went through Facebook to monitor the security of their kids. But, parents also discovered that Facebook was fun and that they got the hang of using the platform.
According to INC , as teens show the big move from Facebook to alternative social media sites like Snapchat, there is a possibility that Facebook’s hotness might expire in the next couple of years.
Though Facebook is trying to acquire minor social media platforms, they should try to evolve their product if they really want to be a long-lasting company.
[Image via iStock]
