Teenagers no longer use Facebook: “it’s less exciting than a spam email”

According to a Pew Research Center study, Facebook has now become completely irrelevant among teens . It is used by just 32% of children between the ages of 13 and 17. A long time ago from 2015, when the social network founded by Mark Zuckerberg was able to reach 71% of teenagers.

The so-called Gen Z today is swept up by other platforms, such as Instagram, TikTok and Snapchat. “Facebook today gives teens the same kind of emotion they would get when reading a spam email,” analysts from Pew Research Center conclude.

According to the study, today there are about five different platforms that can offer a “potentially infinite” scroll feed, but of course people’s time is not nearly as infinite. It follows that users tend to favor the use of two or three platforms. In this intense war to win people’s attention, Facebook has been unable to provide the right incentives for teenagers. Hence the constant loss of ground to the benefit of alternative products including Instagram, also owned by Meta.

In reality, the social network has never particularly warmed the hearts of the very young. This was already revealed by the conclusions of the study conducted in 2013 by the Pew Research Center: “although Facebook is well integrated into the daily lives of adolescents”, the researchers wrote almost ten years ago, “it is often perceived as a sort of mandatory presence. or in any case linked to some form of utility and not entertainment “.

Today Facebook no longer has that role of “social network to attend absolutely”, on pain of missing the fundamental updates on the lives of loved ones, or being cut off from the thousands of groups and subgroups of the school.

The conclusions of the Pew Reasearch Center study are in all respects similar to those of the internal research conducted by Facebook “Young people see Facebook as a social network frequented by 40 or 50-year-olds “, one of the company’s internal dossiers read. by Mark Zuckerberg. Dossiers that should have remained secret, but which were released in 2021 by the mole ‘Frances Haugen . “The contents published on Facebook are perceived by young people as’ boring, false or negative'”.

According to Facebook’s own internal estimates, the social network will continue to lose its bite among teenagers even in the future. In the absence of a major change of course, Facebook is set to become completely irrelevant among all the younger demographics.