Facebook Isn't Dead Quite Yet

Amid reports that a little site known as Facebook is dying as its lifeblood — teens — are leaving it for for more specialized and less parentally-infused social media platforms, a new Pew Research poll has good news for Mark Zuckerberg: Facebook is still the most demographically diverse platform among adults. After all, nearly everyone has a profile at this point. Seventy-one percent of adults have a profile, and 63 percent of them log on at least once a day.

Things look much the same now as they did earlier this year:

...if you’re in America, where two-thirds of Internet users have Facebook, chances are you’ll be a young woman — although you could fit into pretty much any income bracket and live anywhere (city-dwellers lead by about 7 percent). You’ll probably have a little college under your belt (75 percent do) and a smartphone, given that Facebook is also the most popular social media app on smartphones.

The Pew poll also finds that women still use Pinterest like crazy (we outnumber men 4:1), but not that often. Instagram is also still growing among young adults: 37 percent of Instagram users are ages 18 to 29 — a telling number when combined with this finding from the earlier study:

If you’re not a teen or college student on Facebook, then you’re probably a parent stalking them — the 45 to 54-year-old demo has grown 46 percent over the past year.

It's because of those 45-54-year-olds (prime parent age) that teens are leaving Facebook in droves. (Because most teens are under than 18, they were not reflected in Pew's poll.) As we wrote last week:

But all this is getting a little embarrassing for the teens who helped launch the social media phenomenon. Facebook brings disparate groups into the same space, and with the encroachment of moms and dads — manifested in friend requests and clumsy attempts at interaction — kids are leaving to find social refuge elsewhere, according to GMIS lead anthropologist Daniel Miller ...

And so the Millennials are leaving Mark Zuckerberg in droves. Instead of having all their essentials in one place — photo sharing, status updates, and communication — teens are increasingly going the way of the modern investment portfolio and diversifying; placing their stock in individual platforms instead. The mostly parent-free Instagram, Snapchat, and Twitter have taken over on the smartphone. After all, just sixty-seven person of adults 35-49 own tech-savvy mobile phones, compared to 81 percent of those 18-34.

As more 50- to 64-year-olds head over the Facebook, the teens are logging off. They're heading over to Twitter and Instagram (a recent Zuckerberg purchase) in droves in order to fulfill their communicative and photo-sharing needs. It may be that the Millennials are following suit: The Pew Research poll found that 53 percent of users on Twitter also Instagram, and vice versa.

Looks like we better get a handle on it if we want to keep up with the cool kids. Then again, that's exactly what they don't want.