For the past decade, the social networking juggernaut Facebook has been all the rage for youth. The latest trend, however, has been for teenagers to dump the social media outlet and head over to some of its competitors to communicate with their friends, follow celebrities and post updates of their day-to-day lives.
Essentially, according to teenagers, Facebook is transforming into a square, a less cool digital realm to hang out.
A new study by Frank N. Magid Associates Inc. (via Bloomberg News) discovered that the company’s consumer base of American teenagers between 13 and 17 stood at 88 percent, down by six percent from a year ago. Study authors believe this is declining at a “shocking” rate.
The number may sound quite trivial, but when comparing this drop to other firms, it could produce a long-term shift for Facebook. The network’s rivals, however, are experiencing the reverse. Twitter, for instance, grew by two percent among this age demographic in the past year.
In addition, Facebook’s user base tends to be somewhat older than some of its counterparts. Fifty-five percent of Facebook Messenger users are 37 and younger, while 86 percent of Snapchat’s users and 83 percent of Kik Interactive’s users are under 37.
Why exactly are teens foregoing the social network? It’s not particularly because their parents are on it, but rather they feel it’s unsafe and untrustworthy. Also, teens think other social media venues, including Pinterest, are more fun than Facebook.
Tero Kuittinen, a managing director at Magid, wrote in the report that this decline signals a greater concern for Facebook and for the teen population, too.
“You look at Facebook and you say, ‘Wow, something really changed in 2014,'” said Kuittinen. “If kids are starting to use so much of their daily time on messaging apps, surely it’s going to hurt somebody.”
Despite the fact that teens have been exiting Facebook in the last couple of years, Facebook still maintains more than one billion users, and many of its competitors don’t even come close, though some of them, such as Instagram and Twitter, continue to make significant strides.