Facebook ceases being a favourite among US teens; Meta has reasons to worry
A Pew survey has found that teenagers in the United States are increasingly moving away from Facebook.
If you thought Facebook is always going to the social media behaviour, you might need to think again. For, the Meta-owned social media platform is fast losing the popularity it had been enjoying since inception. A survey has found that teens in the United States are increasingly moving away from Facebook.
Over the past seven-year period, American teenagers have preferred less time on Facebook, and switched over to video platforms such as YouTube and TikTok. This was revealed by the results of a survey conducted by the prominent Pew Research Center. The Pew survey included 1,316 US teens, ranging in age from 13 years old to 17 years old, and was conducted between mid-April and early May of 2022.
Facebook pushed to the side by rival TikTok
The survey results point out that US teenagers focussed more social media activity on TikTok and Google’s YouTube stood out as the most common platform used by them. Among the teenagers who were surveyed for the study, close to 95 percent said they used YouTube, while 67 percent asserted their allegiance to TikTok. However, only a 32 percent of the teens surveyed said that they were on Facebook.
This numbers are a big issue that Facebook would need added efforts to tackle. A huge drop of 71 percent of users compared to a seven-year ago period is sure to give sleepless nights to the brains at Facebook and Meta.
The growing popularity of TikTok might be seen as a problem for Facebook and the parent Meta had been in a constant tussle with TikTok for stamping its superiority in the social media terrain. Facebook desperately wants to keep the maximum numbers on its side as it surges ahead with a multi-billion-dollar ad-driven business.
Relief for Meta as Instagram gains user base
Facebook which once used to be the most popular online hangout is fast losing sheen. The survey results actually elaborate on this. Once upon a time the social media space was frequented by the younger generation, but it is slowly changing face, as a spot for older people to hang out. The elder tech savvy generation finds added time to spent on Facebook these days, and are active posting pictures, self-shot video and snippets of their life and things around them.
Even as Facebook has been nursing the void left by US teens, the parent company Meta has some sort of relief to celebrate about. Meta-owned Instagram has been adopted as their own by around 62 percent of the teens surveyed. This is above the 59 percent who are on Snapchat. In fact, the Instagram photo and video sharing service is a popular space among US teenagers at the moment, as against the numbers polled during the Pew 2014-2015 survey. That’s some sort of consolation in these difficult times for Meta.
