Teenagers to Facebook: We Just Aren’t That Into You

Andrew Donaldson

Born and raised in West Virginia, Andrew has since lived and traveled around the world several times over. Though frequently writing about politics out of a sense of duty and love of country, most of the time he would prefer discussions on history, culture, occasionally nerding on aviation, and his amateur foodie tendencies. He can usually be found misspelling/misusing words on Twitter @four4thefire and his food writing website Yonder and Home. Andrew is the host of Heard Tell podcast. Subscribe to Andrew's Heard Tell SubStack for free here:

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11 Responses

  1. Saul Degraw says:

    I think the best explanation I heard was that parents know about Facebook and can demand the passwords. Other social media is designed to be instructable to almost anyone over 33. Plus the messages delete instantly on some of them which is perfect for teenagersReport

  2. Damon says:

    About 8 years ago, my then 13 year old niece said that FB was for old folks. I figured it was doomed back then…Report

    • Andrew Donaldson in reply to Damon says:

      I have enough spread in my kids I could see what their talking about coming. Oldest, now a sophomore in college was big on FB but by the time she graduated it had waned and now doesn’t us it all. The younger kids don’t like it one bit, and their group of friends I would say it rises to the level of openly hating it. Conversely, my mother and father who are otherwise tech adverse love it. Lucky for Facebook they have Istagram, but interesting to see where things go from here.Report

    • Saul Degraw in reply to Damon says:

      I don’t know if billions in profits over 8 years and still going strong counts as doomed. I remember one teenagers don’t use FB and teenagers are back on FB cycle already.Report

  3. Aaron David says:

    Yeah, my son, who is 23, stopped using it before starting college. Now it is a quick way to get a hold of him but not much else. I have no idea if he uses any other social media (outside Bandcamp) as I call him if I want to communicate with him.

    I am guessing that use of it will drop off in the US but will continue to be dominant in the developing world.

    Almost forgot to mention, among his friends, they began to stop using it when their moms started to send them friend requests. That was the killer.Report

  4. Kolohe says:

    I found this because I was curious of that 20ish buck per user per quarter stat.

    Apparently, that level of monetization is very new for facebook, it was more like 4 or 5 bucks as recently as 2013-14.

    Also, it’s still not quite to the level of TV, in terms of ‘rate per user’, but has significantly closed the gap. It’s about half now.Report

  5. Jaybird says:

    Facebook was the awesome thing that young people ages 16-35 all wanted to be on. Then the AARP crowd wanted to be on it so they could keep up with the pictures of the grandbabies. Then the AARP crowd started posting Minion Memes and employers started asking “So… do you have a facebook page?” and googling for such things and then deciding whether or not to hire a person based on whether they have liked the Che Guevara “Bosses Should Be First Against The Wall” page or whether to fire them based upon whether they posted that the James Damore memo was really interesting.

    Why in the hell would you have a Facebook in 2018?

    I mean, unless you only used it to keep up with the grandbabies and to post minion memes.Report

  6. Will Truman says:

    I’m liking my prediction right now.

    Report