Young users see Facebook as 'dead and buried'

[jsr]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/facebook/10539274/Young-users-see-Facebook-as-dead-and-buried.html

Young users see Facebook as 'dead and buried'
A study of how teenagers use social media has found that Facebook is “not just on the slide, it is basically dead and buried”, but that the network is morphing into a tool for keeping in touch with older family members
By Matthew Sparkes

A study of how older teenagers use social media has found that Facebook is “not just on the slide, it is basically dead and buried” and is being replaced by simpler social networks such as Twitter and Snapchat.

Young people now see the site as “uncool” and keep their profiles live purely to stay in touch with older relatives, among whom it remains popular.

Professor Daniel Miller of University College London, an anthropologist who worked on the research, wrote in an article for academic news website The Conversation: “Mostly they feel embarrassed even to be associated with it.

“This year marked the start of what looks likely to be a sustained decline of what had been the most pervasive of all social networking sites. Young people are turning away in their droves and adopting other social networks instead, while the worst people of all, their parents, continue to use the service.

[grasswire]

1. this demographic is all those teens who can't get work...

...and have a fifty percent chance of finding work even after they get a college degree?

I'm beginning to wonder why advertisers and merchandisers peg so much of their sales efforts at the teen and early 20 demographic. Cuz unless they've got mom's debit card, they sure don't have the disposable income of those in their 30s, 40s.

[jtuck004]

13. Mom, and sometimes Dad, are the ones on Facebook (and Pinterest). And they are

the ones with the checkbook, if they are among the lucky ones that still have enough.

But a lot of it has simply gone mobile...

[grahamhgreen]

2. Thank goodness! Very anti-privacy, IMHO.

[Maynar]

3. Probably for the best...

[Iwillnevergiveup]

4. The tellie is still fun

and much, much more personal and rewarding.

[DeSwiss]

5. ''Mostly they feel embarrassed even to be associated with it.''

That's understandable. That, and the fact that it was created after being sponsored by Total Information Awareness (CIA) and DARPA sycophants. It was the spook brainchild that asked the question: ''Why surreptitiously have to sneak around to steal people's info when you can develop software where they'll willingly give it away?''

- That's Facebook. This way they can monitor the mood of the whole country and detect how well their lies are working.......

[LAGC]

20. +1

I've never understood why so many so willingly give up what little privacy they have left.

[solarhydrocan]

31. old but still funny

[DeSwiss]

34. That's the main problem the Onion now has.....

...that since the advent of the Tea Party, it's become virtually unpossible to parody politics anymore.

- Absurdity has become the norm as Mencken warned us. Of course then there's this:

[NBachers]

6. Well, I knew as soon as I finally started using it, that it would pretty much be it's death knell

By the time I start participating in a Big Cultural Phenomenon, it's usually deflating fast.

[shaayecanaan]

7. have twitter or snapchat found a way of making money..

If not....

[TekGryphon]

8. Young users don't understand RSS feeds or how to keep informed

My Facebook allows me to keep track of:

- About 150 close friends and family
- My favorite software developers and authors
- Economists and philosophers
- News sites for my favorite industries
- Social justice organizations
- Progressive think tanks
- Journalists

And much more. It's a one-stop place to get information from experts all over the world.

When I hear people say "Facebook is boring and/or stupid", the response in my head is "You must live a boring and/or stupid life".

[Skittles]

15. yeah that's right

you can't have a life without facebook

[TekGryphon]

19. Who said that? Who even implied that?

[Skittles]

36. you did

When I hear people say "Facebook is boring and/or stupid", the response in my head is "You must live a boring and/or stupid life".

there are many, many folk who do NOT need Facebook to lead full lives

[hatrack]

23. Like the net as a whole . . .

You can learn and stay informed by using it. More critically, you can (with luck and focus) learn to separate the facts from the bullshit in so using it.

Or you can follow the Kardashians and watch cat videos.

[TekGryphon]

25. Exactly, but the useful point of FB is that, like an RSS feed...

... it allows you to consolidate everything that interests you into a single source.

[Skittles]

37. some people can do that without facebook

without leading "boring lives"

[Matariki]

9. I find it interesting that marketers and social engineers value teenagers opinions above all else.

AND, facebook pretty much sucks. At least in terms of privacy, etc.

[Egalitarian Thug]

16. Basically, this demo is incredibly easy to herd and has 100% disposable income.

[DemocraticWing]

28. Pretty easy to understand why...

60 years of future potential purchases are much more valuable than 30 years of future potential purchases. People form habits at a young age, and those tend to stay the same throughout their life.

[tofuandbeer]

10. FaceBook was fun to connect with friends from the past...but that wears off after a couple years.

If the fact that the current teenage population doesn't find it attractive, destroys it...eh, so be it.

[pansypoo53219]

11. TEEHEE. was it the onion's they are the FBI?

[slutticus]

12. So? Who makes all the money?

[SleeplessinSoCal]

14. facebook has evolved IMHO

For those who have lived around the country or around the world, it's a very welcome place. I have friends all over the globe who I now am able to stay connected with on a daily basis. It also is a place where local politics gets really interesting.

Since teenagers are always changing, this was probably bound to happen.

[grasswire]

17. yes, apparently facebook is the new AOL

To be mocked.

I find something cool and new to learn regularly there. Am able to follow the pages of favorite non-profit organizations (museums, music groups) and photo collections, and so much more.

It is really stupid, though, to post one's daily activities and thoughts on FB.

[L0oniX]

18. FB = NSA and parental spy tool.

[JCMach1]

21. My teen girls love Tumblr

they wouldn't dream of using Twitter, or Snapchat.... BORING

[treestar]

22. Makes sense

they need to hang out where Mom and Dad can't see what they are saying.

[PowerToThePeople]

24. What is facebook? Is it similar to myspace?

I think I have an old myspace account. I have not logged into it since around 2005.

[Walk away]

26. I use facebook to stay in touch with my clients and...

none of them are under thirty.

[liberal N proud]

27. I am older and only this last year got a Facebook account

Why did I get it? To keep in touch with family.


Although I know more about some than others, Some post their every move, we ate here, went to Joey's school went to bed at 10 got up at 6. I am waiting for one of them post when they went poop.

[SoCalDem]

29. I find it ridiculous

I "signed up" only to see pictures that our sons upload there. Everything else is like eavesdropping at a party..just snippets of things people I do not know, saying a sentence about someone else I do not know... and looking at responses of my kids to those comments.. yawn

or of ad popping up to tell me that our son & his wife had lunch @ xyz restaurant..or they scored a big win on some game.. whoopie

[BlueStreak]

33. The whole premise is stupid

This idea of an information scroll just floating by makes no sense. I can't believe that some people must just sit there reading that drivel 20 hours a day. Talk about a waste of a life.

[DemocraticWing]

30. I like Facebook.

I use it to keep in touch with people who don't live close to me, but most of my close friends I interact with through Twitter. The problems a lot of young people have with Facebook are because they have made poor choices of who they are "friends" with, and then complain about all of the horrible things that pop up in their newsfeed. Just because you went to high school with somebody, it doesn't mean you were were or are going to be friends with them...but too many people don't quite get that.

Having a bunch of older relatives on the website doesn't help...too many of them have a tenuous grasp of web communication and end up saying things that are pretty embarrassing. It's one thing when your old uncle says something creepy at Thanksgiving dinner, it's quite another when he makes the same comment on your Facebook wall for everybody to see.

[BlueStreak]

32. A $2B tax bill? Nonsense !!!

A "tax bill", eh? Or does Zuckerberg see the writing on the wall and he's going to start pulling out a couple billion dollars at a time before the stock collapses. Who really believes that Zuckerberg has a $2 billion tax bill? These guys know how to avoid paying any taxes at all. NO freaking way he is selling $2B of stock to pay a tax bill.

FB had $1B of net income in 2011, basically no net income in 2012, and may do about $1B again in 2013, but that still puts the stock at around 100 times forward earnings before you factor in any decline because of the site losing its "cool factor". I'd say Zuckerberg should convert his shares as fast as the market will allow because a market cap of $135B is not going to last long if this article is calling that trend right.