There is an ongoing debate about
changing usage patterns on Facebook. A UK academic, Professor Daniel Miller of University
College London, is leading an eight country, multi-city analysis of how
Facebook is used, particularly among teenagers. His view is that the engine
that drove Facebook forward, teen usage, is broken.
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| Professor Daniel Miller |
The study is called the Global Social Media Impact Study. Here is one big conclusion from it: “What we've learned
from working with 16-18 year olds in the UK is that Facebook is not just on the
slide, it is basically dead and buried. Mostly, they feel embarrassed even to
be associated with it. Where once parents worried about their children joining
Facebook, the children now say it is their family that insists they stay there
to post about their lives.”
Teenagers are gravitating instead
towards sites like Snapchat and Twitter, the former because interactions have
no permanent record and the latter because it is so much easier to use.
Whatsapp and Instagram are also quoted by Miller (who acknowledges in his blog
post on an academic website, The Conversation, that Instagram is owned by Facebook).
Teens don’t appear to be migrating
from Facebook as a statement against data gathering or privacy intrusions, the fact
is, these alternatives are mobile-first apps and Facebook is still a web first
platform. Even so, the share price had a great run this year.
Miller adds that young people are
using alternative social networking sites for various reasons: “…the closest
friends are connected to each other via Snapchat, Whatsapp is used to communicate
with quite close friends and Twitter the wider friends. Facebook, on the other
hand has become the link with older family, or even older siblings who have
gone to university.”
Do you agree with this study? Which of the social networking sites do you prefer?
Article was culled from Forbes
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