Facebook: teens are abandoning the platform according to a Pew study
The Internet is gradually gaining momentum in the daily life of adolescents. Despite this, young people's interest in Facebook is declining rapidly.
Before reaching this conclusion, Pew Research Center conducted a survey. This concerns American teenagers, technology and social networks. Ultimately, Pew reported that only 32% of people (13-17) use Facebook. In comparison, 77% of them used the platform in 2013, according to an old Pew report. At that time, Instagram and Snapchat were still behind her and TikTok did not yet exist.
Facebook and teens, different wavelengths
Today, social media abounds on the Internet. In fact, each individual can find one or more social networks that suit him. Among this multitude of choices, teenagers are especially interested in four of them. And Facebook isn't one of them, at least it's not as valuable to teens.
Jules Terpak, who is a young content creator, shared his vision at TechCrunch.
“There are now far more than five highly positioned social media platforms to scroll through endlessly, and it is not viable for our minds to compartmentalize or prioritize our relationship with all of these platforms. »
Jules Terpak, by e-mail
Therefore, users need to remove certain platforms to preserve their time and sanity. In the case of teens, Facebook is losing ground.
Moreover, Facebook's internal reports also point in this direction. This is according to the documents that Frances Haugen disclosed. Between 2019 and the start of 2021, the number of teens using Facebook dropped by 13%.
According to the content creator, this is partly because the network exudes an energy that tends towards spam. Moreover, American teenagers already had this negative feeling in 2013, when the majority were still using Facebook. According to the Pew report, some considered it a must.
In addition, teenagers were already showing more interest in other social networks in 2013. As a result, time has made young users converge on them to abandon Facebook.
The favorite social networks of teenagers
If teenagers are tired of Facebook, this is not the case of Instagram which is also a Meta platform. Since a previous survey (2014-2015), the number of young users (Americans) on Instagram has increased from 10% to 62%. These figures happen to be quite close to that of TikTok which is second in the ranking, with its 67%. In fourth place is Snapchat with 59%.
However, YouTube far outdistances the latter with its 95%. A colossal gap which does not mean that it dominates the other social networks. Indeed, a large majority of these teenagers only use it to watch videos or listen to music. And this is quite normal since YouTube does not really encourage interaction with other connected people.
Regarding frequency of use, Pew reported that 19% of young people use YouTube "almost constantly". At the same time, TikTok, Snapchat and Instagram receive the same degree of attention from 16%, 15% and 10% of respondents respectively. In comparison, only 2% are in favor of Facebook.
