A recent survey conducted by investment company Piper Jaffray has found that social networking phenomenon Facebook is becoming less popular amongst teenagers.
As part of the survey, 6,350 teenagers in the US were questioned about their views and habits on social media sites. The average age of the respondents was just 16.
Facebook currently has over 1.59 billion active users worldwide and is the largest social network on the planet. In late 2015, Instagram, which is owned by Facebook, overtook Twitter as the second most popular social network as it passed the 400 million active users milestone. Twitter now sits in third place with 332 million active users. This shows that Facebook is well ahead in terms of registered numbers.
However, this survey proves that numbers don’t always translate into popularity. In fact, 28% of respondents stated that photo-messaging service Snapchat was the most important social networking site in their eyes, with this service having a total of 100 million active users. This number of teens in favour of Snapchat has risen from the 19% who gave the same answer the last time the survey was conducted in November 2015.
Instagram ranked in second place, a single percent behind the leader, with 27% of respondents claiming the photo-sharing app to be the most important network. This figure is down from November’s 33%, which means the service has dropped from first to second spot – a move that was correctly predicted by analysts.
Facebook ranked in third place in this particular poll, some way behind the leading two. Despite coming in third, it was revealed that 78% of teens still utilise the platform, which is only second to YouTube, whereas Snapchat, Twitter and Instagram were only used by half of teens. This shows that although this age category views the site as less important compared to others, it still remains dominant in terms of usage.
A separate survey measured the “coolness” of each social media site and this showed quite different results for Mark Zuckerberg’s creation. This study asked teenagers to rank the 10 most popular social networks on a scale of 1-5. A rank of one suggests that the site is not at all cool, and a rank of five means that the site is very cool.
Facebook did not attain a great score on the cool scale, with the site placing seventh out of the 10. Only Google+, Pinterest and Tumblr ranked behind the world’s biggest network. YouTube came out on top in this poll, with Snapchat, Instagram, Vine, Twitter and WhatsApp placing second to sixth.
Although teenagers appear to be dabbling into as many different networks as possible, Facebook still remains one of the most used, even though it may not be as cool as it was about five years ago.
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