The governments of the world, privacy issues, and debates about information monopolies might turn out as the least of Facebook’s problem. If the new Pew data is to be believed, Facebook is not only under fire, but teens just aren’t that into it anymore.
Bloomberg:
Now only 51 percent of kids ages 13-17 use Facebook, according to Pew Research Center. The world’s largest social network is eclipsed in popularity by YouTube, Snapchat and Facebook Inc.-owned Instagram.
“The social media environment today revolves less around a single platform than it did three years ago,” the researchers wrote in a survey published on Thursday. Alphabet Inc.’s YouTube is the most popular, used by 85 percent of teens, according to Pew.
The U.S. is by far Facebook’s most lucrative advertising market, where it makes a staggering $23.59 in quarterly revenue per user. But that doesn’t mean growth can continue forever. The company said in its most recent earnings call that it’s effectively saturated the market in the U.S. and Canada, counting 185 million users in those two countries combined.
The study demonstrates how difficult it may be to keep up that level of dominance, and how important the 2012 Instagram acquisition has been for Facebook’s future. Facebook didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Instagram is slightly more popular than Snapchat overall, Pew said, with 72 percent of respondents saying they use the photo-sharing app, compared with Snapchat’s 69 percent. But Snap Inc. is holding its own, despite Instagram’s frequent parroting of its features. About one-third of the survey’s respondents said they visit Snapchat and YouTube most often, while 15 percent said Instagram is their most frequent destination.
Meanwhile, only 10 percent of teens said Facebook is their most-used online platform. The Pew analysis was based on a survey of 1,058 parents who have a teenager from 13 to 17, as well as interviews with 743 teens themselves. Interviews were conducted online and by telephone from March 7 to April 10.
The underlying Pew article, also notes that smartphones are nearly universal among American teens, and that demographic has a varied view of the effect of social media has on them.
This shift in teens’ social media use is just one example of how the technology landscape for young people has evolved since the Center’s last survey of teens and technology use in 2014-2015. Most notably, smartphone ownership has become a nearly ubiquitous element of teen life: 95% of teens now report they have a smartphone or access to one. These mobile connections are in turn fueling more-persistent online activities: 45% of teens now say they are online on a near-constant basis.
The survey also finds there is no clear consensus among teens about the effect that social media has on the lives of young people today. Minorities of teens describe that effect as mostly positive (31%) or mostly negative (24%), but the largest share (45%) says that effect has been neither positive nor negative.
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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
There is a lot too that. I know in our house the younger kids are only allowed apps/sites that we have passwords too, and that goes for all their devices as well. Thankfully I was before all this modern tech, cause as deviant as I was something like snapchat, safely out of parental eyes, would have been used.Report
That should be incomprehensibleReport
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
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
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
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
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
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
I’m liking my prediction right now.
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Looking good on that prediction. The buried led in that story is the fact that if Facebook hadn’t acquired Instagram they would be in serious trouble right now, among other issues.Report