Quote
Last year alone, the social network lost more than 1.4 million users in the 12 to 17-year old demographic, according to new report from research firm eMarketer. That represents a decline of nearly 10 percent, or roughly three times what analysts had predicted. Notably, 2017 was the first time that analysts expected the company to see a drop in usage for any age group. Overall, Facebook lost 2.8 million U.S. users under the age of 25, the data found.

QuoteUnfortunately for Zuck, 2018 isn't shaping up to look any better. EMarketer predicts another 5.6 percent decline in users between 12 and 17 years old, and a 5.8 percent decline for those between 18 and 24. That likely has executives worried about the long-term dominance of the social media platform.

https://www.inc.com/zoe-henry/facebook-losing-users-faster-than-expected-2018.html

Based (roughly) on the reverse of adoption of hotel online bookings in the late 90s, FB has 5 years to fix this or it'll bite hard.

I meant to post one of those articles.

Think of the impact on Russians trying to influence young voters!

I don't see FB being able to turn it around with younger users, but what I wonder is whether the downturn is generational or a function of age. In other words, when those people start having kids and want to share photos with grammy and grampa, do they come "home" to Facebook, where all the old folks are?

I am not sure if it is representative of kids at large, but my 12 y.o. and her friends are mostly on Google groups atm.   Our family has a perma-chat going where we share stuff on GG.   The teens are still using instagram (FB owned), but it doesn't seem as popular as it was.

>teens are still using instagram

That's what I'm hearing from my daughter (high school teacher).

I've also seen articles about teens trying out (supposedly) encrypted services like Telegram, but I don't know how legit that is.