Gen Z internet use is on the rise, but the rate at which teens use Facebook is rapidly declining. A Pew Research Center study on teens, technology and social media found that only 32% of teens aged 13-17 use Facebook at all, but in a previous survey from 2014-2015, that figure was 71%, beating out platforms like Instagram and Snapchat.<\/p>\n
Jules Terpak, a gen Z content creator covering digital culture, told that teens just don\u2019t find value in Facebook anymore.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are now well over five strongly positioned social media platforms to endlessly scroll through, and it isn\u2019t sustainable for our minds to compartmentalize nor prioritize our relationship with all of them,\u201d Terpak said via email. \u201cFor the sake of time and sanity, people have to eliminate platforms that begin to lack a value-add incentive.\u201d<\/p>\n
Terpak thinks that Facebook, which teens often associate with their parents, has little to offer Gen Z.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe culture cultivated by the average Facebook user is very disconnected from what attracts Gen Z to a platform today, instead exuding the energy of a spam email,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Even in 2013, when 77% of online teens used Facebook, young users still felt negatively about the platform.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile Facebook is still deeply integrated in teens\u2019 everyday lives, it is sometimes seen as a utility and an obligation rather than an exciting new platform that teens can claim as their own,\u201d Pew\u2019s report from 2013 said. In that nine-year-old study, Pew found that teens expressed more enthusiasm for other platforms, even if they weren\u2019t using them as much as Facebook. That trend has remained constant \u2014 as new generations of teens join social media, they\u2019ve almost abandoned Facebook altogether.<\/p>\n
Pew\u2019s new findings are also consistent with Facebook\u2019s own internal reporting, according to documents leaked by whistleblower Frances Haugen. A Facebook researcher found in early 2021 that teenage users on Facebook\u2019s app had declined 13% since 2019 and projected that the figure would continue to plummet 45% over the next two years. Overall, Facebook usership has remained somewhat stagnant, but this drop-off in a key demographic is bad news for Facebook\u2019s ads business, which makes up the bulk of its revenue.<\/p>\n
\u201cMost young adults perceive Facebook as a place for people in their 40s and 50s,\u201d said the 2021 internal Facebook document\u00a0obtained by The Verge. \u201cYoung adults perceive content as boring, misleading, and negative.\u201d<\/p>\n
Instagram is not far behind TikTok<\/h2>\n
Even if teens are tired of Facebook, they haven\u2019t given up on Instagram, another Meta platform. Sixty-two percent of teens use Instagram, up from 52% in the 2014-2015 survey. But TikTok, which wasn\u2019t even released at the time of the last study, is now used by 67% of U.S. teens. 95% of teens say the use YouTube, which may make it seem like it\u2019s the dominant social platform \u2014 but many users interact with the platform simply to watch videos, rather than as a place to connect with others online. For example, a teen who uses YouTube to listen to music would be included in that 95%.<\/p>\n
Image Credits:<\/strong> Pew Research Center (opens in a new window)<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n But as TikTok inches above Instagram and Snapchat \u2014 which are used by 62% and 59% of American teens, respectively \u2014 it makes sense why these older platforms are so desperate to mimic their newer competitor.<\/p>\n Pew also asked the 1,316 surveyed teens about the frequency with which they use these apps. But TikTok still earned a greater share of teens\u2019 attention than any platform aside from YouTube, which 19% of teens say they use \u201calmost constantly.\u201d TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat earned this \u201calmost constant attention\u201d from 16%, 10%, and 15% of teens respectively. Only 2% said this about Facebook.<\/p>\n Image Credits:<\/strong> Pew Research Center (opens in a new window)<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n These \u201calmost constant\u201d admissions might seem alarming, but teens are aware that social media usage may not always provide the social connection they hope for. Thirty-six percent of teens think that they spend too much time on social media. Conversely, only 8% of teens said that they think they don\u2019t use social media enough.<\/p>\n If you think Gen Z is full of phone-addicted zombies, though, you might be wrong. Forty-five percent of teens said that they wouldn\u2019t have trouble giving up social media. More power to them.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Gen Z internet use is on the rise, but the rate at which teens use Facebook is rapidly declining. A Pew Research Center study on teens, technology and social media found that only 32% of teens aged 13-17 use Facebook at all, but in a previous survey from 2014-2015, that figure was 71%, beating out […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1174851,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1174849","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrity-gossip"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1174849","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1174849"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1174849\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1174849"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1174849"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1174849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/gp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/Screen-Shot-2022-08-11-at-3.59.20-PM.png\")
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