Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) now seems to be an old platform which doesn’t interest younger users anymore. Teens are now spending less time on the social media platform and are opting for newer technologies. With teens leaving Facebook, Inquisitr asks a question about whether the social media company will be “obsolete in the next ten years, backing it up with third-party claims.
An old platform
Facebook has come up a long way from being Mark Zuckerberg’s dorm room project to the world’s largest social media platform, but over the course of five years, technology has changed a lot with new players coming in like Instagram, Musically, Snapchat, Twitter and many others.
With the arrival of other apps, teenagers have proved that they are open to adapting new technological changes much faster; thus they have moved from Facebook to other apps. This leaves Facebook as a pretty old platform for youngsters now days. Previously, Bianca Bosker from the Huffington Post interviewed 13- to 16-year-old kids and found that the majority of them have not been using Facebook anymore.
“Facebook feels like the mom and dad version of Twitter and Instagram,” one of the girls said in the interview.
Not technically leaving Facebook
According to a survey conducted by Piper Jaffray, Instagram has been rated as the most important platform among teens, followed by Facebook. Twitter was at third place. This was a big departure from the results a year and a half ago in which teens favored Facebook as their most-loved online networking website. Over the course of two years, the sharing patterns of teens on Facebook has also gone down from 42% to 23%. On the contrary, Twitter and Instagram are doing well as sharing platforms.
However, according to Bosker, teens do not understand that they were “leaving Facebook for Facebook,” as Instagram is owned by the social networking giant. In recent years, Facebook has extended its reach from being a solo networking platform to a mother ship of smaller online networking sites. Twitter did the same thing by purchasing Vine.
Why are teens abandoning Facebook?
Daily Dot tried to inquire and reason out why teens are leaving Facebook. Nico Lang did research with his 16-year-old “cool” brother to understand why the social networking giant is not hip anymore.
“People don’t have to hang out with their friends; they can just see what they’re doing. … I prefer actually talking to people. I would rather get their number than be friends on Facebook, where you have 100 friends you never talk to. It’s a meaningless friendship,” said Eric, Nico Lang’s younger brother.
According to INC, as teens are moving from Facebook to other apps, there are good chances that Facebook’s hotness will expire in the next couple of years.
