A new European Union-funded study has found that teenagers are migrating away from Facebook to other services including Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat and Whatsapp.
University College London (UCL) material sciences professor Daniel Miller, in a paper based on the study, has referred Facebook as being ‘dead and buried’ to teenagers. Miller has revealed that teenagers are moving away from the service and migrating to other services, but parents of these young people are still using the no. 1 social network.
Miller said that young people are moving away from Facebook because they are embarrassed to use the service and are using other services to avoid being spied upon by their parents. Miller claims that teenagers dread receiving a friend request from their parents and are less concerned about being spied upon by government organizations or big corporations.
There are business users who believe that Facebook is an evil corporation that steals user data such that it can be used by advertisers on the platform. However, teenagers are not bothered about this particular aspect and it doesn’t appear to be the prime reason why they are defecting to other social platforms.
“It is nothing new that young people care about style and status in relation to their peers, and Facebook is simply not cool anymore,” Miller said.
Another highlight of the report is the changing landscape of media. Whatsapp has overtaken Facebook as being the number one platform for messaging which indicates that dynamics of new media is changing and that social networking platforms may not be the only way forward for teens.
Hate to break it to you…..FB was never cool.
No offense intended, but I strongly feel that this is revisionist history. A few years ago, if you’d just listened to tables of college-aged folks shouting at restaurants or bars, you’d hear them mention something funny that happened on Facebook that week and everybody would laugh. Facebook was cool, and then lost it when parents joined and the whole thing became corporate. Facebook might not be as cool as it once was within the pop culture, but you can look at how many brands are going to put their Facebook URLs in major superbowl ads soon or how many companies there are listed at http://www.buylikesreview.com to see how much of an impact Facebook still has in business.
Right now, the same phenomenon is happening to Snapchat – they’re dominating the culture and kids are talking about them exclusively. But while Facebook isn’t loved, they’re making decent cash and Snapchat is making nothing.
Facebook has too much momentum to die just because its not cool anymore, but 5 years from now might be a different story.
“MySpace” was ‘cool’….the rest, imitations, imho, ravencloved.
Not to mention that those other “platforms” are not even comparable. And WhatsApp? In addition to having an idiotic name, nobody in the U.S. cares about it.
Too bad that they’re defecting for the wrong reasons. Facebook is a lowlife organization that rips off its users and customers, period. THAT is why people should abandon it.
Once you get WhatsApp (or the similar apps) Facebook will be dead to you. I use FB as repository of contacts now, that’s it. Seriously, FB is over. It may take a few years but it’s over.
Agree with your second paragraph though.