As a communicator or marketer it’s likely you were glued to some or all of the spectacle of Mark Zuckerberg’s testimony on Capitol Hill last week. Odds are teens skipped it.
The below chart, from PiperJaffray’s Taking Stock With Teens, a bi-annual survey of some 6,000 U.S. teens, is yet more evidence that Facebook, despite its 2 billion users globally, is the adult in the room as far as social media goes.
As we know, American teens prefer Snapchat; 45% in this survey called it their favorite platform.
Instagram is next, with 26% of those surveyed saying it’s their first choice. (By the way, if any of the 26% watched Zuckerberg’s performance hoping for lawmakers to question him extensively about Facebook-owned Instagram, they were disappointed.)
But back to PiperJaffray’s numbers on Facebook; these data are among the starkest displays of teens’ dislike for Facebook, with just 9% naming it their favorite.
For example, RBC’s January report wasn’t great news for Facebook on the youth front, but it seemed temperate by comparison ( PRN, January 9). RBC reported 79% of 13-to 18-year-olds have Snapchat; 73% for Instagram; and 57% for Facebook.
Earlier in the year we reported eMarketer data showing the gray-haired set was powering Facebook’s modest 1% growth (PRN, February 13). It also estimated the leading social platform will lose 2 million users aged 24 and younger in 2018. Snapchat will gain 1.9 million in the 24 and younger age group, it predicts.
In addition, Facebook users 12 to 17 and 18 to 24 will de- crease by 5.6% and 5.8%, respectively, eMarketer estimated in February. It was the first time it predicted a drop in the number of U.S. Facebook users in those groups.
With all this and the allegations against Facebook’s misuse of personal data resulting in the Capitol Hill hearings, the sky is not falling on Menlo Park. Not even close.
As the data we reported going into the hearings shows, Facebook users, while concerned about data privacy, are not so concerned they’ll be giving up using the platform (PRN, April 3). A survey of 3,000 people by Tellwut, taken days before the hearings had similar findings: 70% of Americans and 67% of Canadians had no plan to close their Facebook accounts due to concerns over Cambridge Analytica.
