Are teenagers really abandoning Facebook?
There has been a lot of publicity this month into the supposed decline of interest in Facebook amongst young people.
Shock. Horror! The global social media giant has been declared ‘old hat’ by teens, say some experts.
But is the alleged decline really as marked as some are claiming? And if it is, what does this mean for the future of social media marketing?
iStrategyLabs, a Washington-based digital agency, recorded a decline in teenagers using Facebook. In the period January 2011-January 2014, they claim that a significant 3.3 million teens aged 13-17 left the site. 3.4 million 18-24 year olds also left.
Drops such as this suggest a changing landscape for a site once considered to be the reserve of the world’s youngsters. Indeed, these damning statistics could be coupled with the rise in users amongst the 35-54 and 55 plus age groups to suggest a decided shift in the age demographic using the site.
This may be bad news for teenagers desperate to keep the photographic evidence of their drunken antics away from suspicious parents, but is it good news for brands using Facebook for their online marketing?
Teenagers are not the ones with the money to invest in brands. The people with the disposable income to buy most online products tend to come from older age groups; exactly the people that are currently signing up to Facebook in their droves.
However, is the evidence that teenagers are abandoning Facebook really that conclusive?
Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s COO, said in November that there is no teen problem: ‘The vast majority of US teens are on Facebook. And the majority of US teens use Facebook almost every day.”
There could be another reason for the supposed decline in teenagers on Facebook. According to VentureBeat, the site has recently made an effort to crack down on the site’s fake accounts. This is likely to cull so-called ‘zombie’ accounts made up largely by the younger generations who have more idle online time.
What cannot be denied is that Facebook has expanded massively. Quite simply, a huge number of people in the developed world, regardless of age, have an account. The site has a global use of 1.19 billion monthly users.
Older users are ripe for being targeted by businesses looking to promote brands to the demographic most likely to spend money. Similarly it’s good news that youngsters haven’t gone completely awol. Teens still have a considerable presence on the world’s most popular social network even if they are increasingly beginning to flirt with the new wave of instant messaging apps.
Good news all around, then.
Sources:
http://venturebeat.com/2012/09/26/facebook-fake-fans-followers.
http://econsultancy.com/blog/63918-20-mind-blowing-social-media-statistics-three-years-later
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