Study: U.K. Teens Fleeing 'Dead and Buried' Facebook

[IDemo]

It's a familiar and worrisome refrain for Facebook—the company's core user base is supposedly getting older and the next generation just isn't interested in joining the social network anymore.

Now the preliminary results from a multi-country, European Union-funded study of social media suggest Mark Zuckerberg and Co. really should be as worried as all that. Older teens in the United Kingdom "are turning away in their droves" from Facebook "and adopting other social networks instead," Daniel Miller, professor of material culture at University College London (UCL), wrote in a blog post last week.

Miller, the lead anthropologist on the research team conducting the ongoing Global Social Media Impact Study by the UCL Social Networking Sites & Social Science Research Project, went on to say that Facebook "is basically dead and buried" among U.K. youth.

Researchers with the project are interviewing people about their social media use over 15 months in simultaneously conducted ethnographic studies in eight countries. While the project is still in its fieldwork stage, Miller and his colleagues have teased out some early findings from their research with 16-18 year olds.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2428773,00.asp

[Galileo126]

1. It's not just the U.K.

We're sick of the political masturbation that happens on FB. Political posts in FB do nothing except satisfy the writer. They are "slackavists" - slacker activists, existing in there own mind, accomplishing nothing., yelling loudly.

"I am mouse, here me roar!" etc.

I gave up FB years ago. In fact, if it weren't for playing Scrabble long distance, I never would have joined.

[Courtesy Flush]

2. I now use facebook as a news aggregator

I follow various artists' pages, news organizations, and cancer groups, but I have un-friended nearly 300 people to finally have some peace.

I now have only one facebook friend -- my wife.

[El_Johns]

3. Facebook must die.

[Shandris]

4. Its just sad that archives of it will be around to ruin lives for...

...about 60 more years.

While I recognize the good that -can- come from social media, the evil it does far outweighs it imo. I'd like to think somehow that will/can be corrected some day, but I'll be darned if I know how.

Diaspora seems...interesting, but even it can be archived. That's pretty much the big limiter imo. Still, its good to see Satan 2.0 (after MySpace) starting the downward slide.