Facebook Is Officially Too Uncool for Teenagers, Even YouTube Gets More Street Cred

Every new generation of teens will inevitably have trends, habits, and innovations which they can call their own. It’s also inevitable that older examples of these would be phased out. In the case of today’s teenagers, for example, Facebook is no longer the top social media platform that it was to yesterday’s youngsters. This is according to a survey done by the Pew Research Report.

Published on Thursday, the report indicated that only 51 percent or half of the teens between the ages of 13 and 17 are using Facebook. This is a steep drop from three years ago, when 71 percent of the same demographic used the site.

Instead of Facebook, teens within that age range prefer using platforms like YouTube, Snapchat, and Instagram. While that last social media service is owned by Facebook, it comes with a completely different style and clearly caters to the demographic in a much different way. On top of the implications on Facebook, the results of this survey also cover many other aspects of technology.

“This shift in teens’ social media use is just one example of how the technology landscape for young people has evolved since the Center’s last survey of teens and technology use in 2014-2015. Most notably, smartphone ownership has become a nearly ubiquitous element of teen life: 95% of teens now report they have a smartphone or access to one. These mobile connections are in turn fueling more-persistent online activities: 45% of teens now say they are online on a near-constant basis,” the report reads.

One of the reasons why this survey result is so problematic for Facebook is the matter of scale. As Bloomberg reports, the platform has just about saturated both the U.S. and Canada in terms of the number of users it has in those countries. This is troublesome for Facebook since those are some of its most lucrative markets.

By losing touch with teens, the biggest social network in the world will start having trouble growing more than it already has. At this rate, it’s going to hit a ceiling and start stalling before shrinking.