Leave, or never sign up? The thing about people is that they age. Someone who fell into the 18-24 category could very well be in the 25-34 category three years later (that category showed growth). While certainly not all of the people aged themselves out of the categories with the most negative growth, I'm left to wonder how many of them <i>did</i>. Say 1 million 16 year olds are now 19 year olds. With no new signups, this would leave 1 million fewer 13-17 year olds and 1 million more 18-24 year olds. In that same time frame, 2 million 23 year olds are now 26 year olds. This leaves a negative on the 13-17 category as well as a negative on the 18-24, but a positive on the 25-34 category.<p>Obviously my numbers are completely made up and hardly reflect reality. But as it stands, this is pretty meaningless data to draw the conclusion that 3 million teens have left Facebook. The only conclusion is that 3 million Facebook users are no longer teenage Facebook users (either no longer teenagers or no longer Facebook users). If teens are aging themselves out of the "teen" category and the younger generation isn't signing up to fill their place, that's not the same as "leaving" Facebook.
Total speculation driven by personal anecdotal evidence:<p>I think a lot of teens don't have a use for Facebook yet. Facebook is a pretty good tool for staying connected with people from high school and college and past jobs that you wouldn't see otherwise. Most teens are in high school with the same people from their jr high/gradeschool. They have smaller social networks, are focused on small groups of immediate friends, and have watched the kids a year or two older than them get in serious trouble for posting the stupid stuff teens do on the permanent social networks (Twitter, Facebook), and would rather use ephemerality (Snapchat) to avoid accountability.
Did anyone else notice that the numbers for 2011 seem to have a resolution of about 120, whereas the numbers for 2014 (by age) are either rounded to the nearest million, or else they just don't have good enough info to guess to anything closer than the nearest million?<p>And the "3 million" claim is based on multiplying this guessed-at year-over-year variance by 3. So if the margin of error is about a million, times 3...uh, you do the math, folks.
Grandma and Grandpa seem to be more than compensating for lost teens.<p>A couple other #s surprised me:<p>- NY's 100+% growth. I would have thought NYC would be an early adopter. Why so different than Chicago? Chicago's 2011 # seems very close to NYC, so perhaps Chicago was an earlier adopter? Same with LA.<p>- The dropoff in College is interesting too, but not amongst alums. It's almost like Facebook is more useful to people who are more scattered from their old friends.
When will we stop crying wolf for every tech company's demise when there's no enough data to support any kind of underlying trend?<p>3 million is a drop in the ocean for Facebook and I don't even know how much valuable the teen demographic might be. Teen for the most part don't have jobs (heck, these days even older men have trouble finding jobs) and have to beg parents to buy them things. If you advertise a certain product on Facebook they don't go to, say, Amazon and translate the intention into action, so conversion rates must be abysmally low.<p>Trust me, Facebook can take it.
This is so odd to me. I can't help but think that people who cite this study and studies that highlight the "decline" of Facebook are simply Facebook haters for one reason or another. They are just clamoring for a reason to hate on Facebook. Maybe they're just jealous of the Zuck.<p>It doesn't matter if teens aren't on Facebook. Why? Facebook, just like every other tech company right now, is taking operations global. If they lose 3 million teens in America they'll gain 3 million in Japan or Africa or China or Russia or India or etc.<p>Also, ultimately, nobody seems to be asking the question, why do we need teens to use Facebook? Are they perhaps converting later in life? Are teens not using Facebook and then becoming adults and still not using Facebook? Do we want to monetize minors? Are they even really worth monetizing?<p>I'm not saying the loss of teens of Facebook is a useless metric to follow, I'm rather asking people to answer more relevant question.<p>The more people talk about the decline of Facebook due to declining teen numbers, the more likely other people will think you have some sort of jealousy thing going for the Zuck. Honestly, these numbers tell you virtually nothing about "teen migration" away from Facebook. I feel like they're move to buy Snapchat was just to shut everybody about this teen bullshit.<p>Stop hatin' and get your facts straight.
Who paid for this report to be produced? iStrategyLabs is a marketing company, not unlike some of the other 'analysts' out there, and one of their paid functions is to shape opinion, not just report it.<p>Qui Bono?
I keep facebook only to keep in touch with friends (be able to send message or email once every year, in case they change it without letting me know).<p>I frankly don't like to read about what friends are doing because often, the friends are posting about happy moments/things/experiences. While I am very happy my friends are having good time/life, I ask myself, why am I NOT enjoying life as much as they are.<p>It's like as if people used to be envious of Hollywood stars in the past. People would read/watch about them and feel envy. Now that any facebook user can broadcast themselves, my friends are turning into mini-hollywood-stars.
Has the author considered that Facebook might not be releasing stats on teens for multiple reasons? It might not be a drop but unreleased information that is causing the numbers to change. That, and people frequently lie about their age on Facebook so you cannot trust someone's profile age to be their actual age or date of birth (nor should you be trying to work out how old someone is from their public profile but that is another matter).
What's curious about these statistics is that they seem to measure membership rather than engagement.<p>Do they account for people who register but neglect their accounts? People who choose to deactivate their accounts but don't know how to permanently delete them?
Does anyone know which demographic generates the most advertising revenue for Facebook (yes, I have tried to find this data myself)? I'm curious, but it would also provide context to the impact of the teen trends stories.
I think these numbers are a bit inaccurate.<p>There are 549,000 Married Teens (13-17), yet only 1000 Teen Parents.<p>That makes absolutely no sense to me. I would understand it if the numbers were reversed, but this is just plain inaccurate.