I will NOT FRIEND MY MOM. That was my 13 year-old son’s rallying cry until it became a condition of him having what he called then “A Facebook.” In the past year, he’s de-friended me once – because he was supposed to be doing his homework and he was posting on Facebook which I of course had to comment on.
But a conniving babysitter found his password and had him re-friend me while he wasn’t looking. Tough break.
The Brits saw it first. The Guardian reports that just 50-percent of 15-to-24-year-olds in the United Kingdom had a profile on a social networking site in 2009, compared to 55 percent in 2008. This is the first time that number has dropped since the Facebook and MySpace boom a few years ago.
But the tail-end of the Generation Xers and their younger siblings still want Facebook. The number of 25-to-34-year-olds that use these sites grew from 40-46% last year.
Will the United States be next? Will social networking become uncool? Will we 30-50 somethings become the next generation of Facebook users mocked by our teens?
Listen up advertisers. If you work with or have teenage kids – two out of two for me – you know that if their parents do it they will stop. It’s kind of like the New York adage – “Once the bridge and tunnel crowd get there (meaning Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens – Staten Island doesn’t count) the cool people stop going.” We parents are the bridge and tunnel crowd. We’ve ruined it.
But if the kids leave social media where will they go? I’m seeing an upsurge in texting even off the current base which is quite high. After all texting is pretty private, and other teens always text back. Why sit on a computer when you can do it from your IPhone?
Or maybe, just maybe – meeting face-to-face (Anyone remember hanging out at 7-Eleven or the local pizza parlor?) will stage a comeback.
unfortunately I don't think that decline means that they are leaving social media.
ReplyDeletemost are just tired of MySpace being what it is now - a giant mess of a site - and moving to Facebook.
Facebook's numbers actually are still growing and passed MySpace in number of unique users recently - becoming the number 1 social network site.
When these social sites started popping up, everyone (teens) wanted to try all of them - but after a few years, you get tired of maintaining so many accounts, thus why i think the decline. - I personally deleted 3 other accounts and have Facebook as my sole social network site. :)