Facebook has long been considered the dominant marketing platform as far as social media is concerned, but is that still true? Sure, the numbers are still huge, but the problem stems from who makes up those numbers. An increasingly large amount of parents and grandparents are getting in on the Facebook game, and now, they dominate the platform. Just like in real life, teenagers aren’t really digging their communication being monitored by their elders, so they’re looking to move to greener, less parental pastures. How dramatic is this egress to your social media marketing? Let’s take a look.
First thing’s first, let’s look at the numbers. We have a great graph from Piper Jaffrar Companies that shows exactly the change over time:
Image: Statista
So what do you make of this graph?
FACEBOOK: Facebook is the clear loser here with teens. We see a drop-off of almost 50% of the teen userbase. This can be directly attributed to the influx of older family members to the social network, as well as the fairly stringent age requirements (recently lifted) required by Facebook.
TWITTER: Twitter is holding pretty steady. They’re down too, but just a percentage point or two. Twitter doesn’t care how old you are, which is a point in their favor with teens. Anyone can make an account and just start posting without much of the Facebook-style intrusions.
INSTAGRAM: The photo heavy social network is the clear winner here. Teens want to share interesting pictures and videos with their friends, and Instagram lets them do that without all of the parents and frills. I wouldn’t be surprised if this number continued to trend upwards.
So, what does this mean for your Facebook marketing efforts? If your target audience is teens, you may want to start moving towards Instagram, where opportunities are actually pretty readily available. If your target audience is an older crowd, then Facebook is still the social network of choice.