As parents take over teenagers are leaving Facebook for other social networking sites like Twitter.
People over 30 are now Facebook’s primary users as more and more teenagers are abandoning the site. It has been described as the Levi’s effect by social media expert Michael McQueen.
Mr McQueen stated, ”Levi jeans were a cool, young brand – until parents started wearing them – and the same thing has happened with Facebook.” He added that teenagers are now joining other social networking sites like Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat instead.
Till 2012 Facebook was the primary social networking site for teenagers, but this year Twitter has taken over the number one spot. Mcqueen added that the site has been overtaken by people 30 years and above as teenagers log off. He stated that people were logging on to reconnect with their school friends as well as people who live overseas.
”The older generation began signing up in 2010 and, originally, a lot of these users were parents who wanted to spy on their kids,” he said. ”But now they are reconnecting with old school friends and people who live overseas and they have caught the Facebook bug.”
Facebook’s CFO David Ebersman recently stated that the company “did see a decrease in daily users, specifically among younger teens.” Approximately $18 billion were wiped of the company’s market value due to the decrease in usage by teens. However Facebook’s COO Sheryl Sandberg has refuted the statement adding that the site does not have a teen problem and continues to be useful to teenagers. Sandberg added that there is a lot of competition in the social networking sites but there is room for everyone to grow.
Source: DNA