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Facebook lost around 2.8M U.S. users under 25 last year

recode.net

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Re: Facebook lost around 2.8M U.S. users under 25 last year

#41

Post by kawfey »

Facebook still hasn't lost me and my group of 25-something friends, but we have pretty much all turned off notifications, dabble in disabling our profile every now and then, and only rationalize not deleting it for saying hi to grandma, creating and RSVPing to events, and the ubiquity of Facebook Messenger.

The only ones posting (or at least the only posts that facebook shows me) are a mixture of advertising, extremely politically driven posts and links, someone's birthday, and a random smattering of generic posts from friends with whom you don't keep contact.

Our primary social media is group chats, texting, and snapchat, and reddit.

Re: Facebook lost around 2.8M U.S. users under 25 last year

#42

Post by mrguyorama »

My biggest problem in using Facebook is that I simply have nothing worth sharing. I never take pictures, and I talk to all my friends on a regular basis, so posting things would be redundant. I've discounted Facebook as a way to meet people. I purposely avoid using a desktop to access Facebook on the once every few months occasion where I need to copy-paste anything from my group chat with highschool friends. I just don't see any reason to strengthen my account on the platform

Re: Facebook lost around 2.8M U.S. users under 25 last year

#44

Post by colanderman »

alex_young wrote: post #4

How many users are just hanging on? I use FB very occasionally for some events, but mostly never login. I get nagging notifications about how much I'm missing, but it doesn't feel like much. I suspect there is a growing population of people with similar usage patterns. Are we really monthly active users?

I have three use cases that keep me there:

1) I'm in a couple specific regional groups that AFAIK have no non-Facebook counterpart (though they easily could). I think Facebook does groups poorly, but they serve the "non-technical community space" use case much better than any other popular offering that I know of.

2) It's the easiest way for me to blast low-key questions/updates/etc. to most of my friends and family. (I don't have everyone's e-mail address and even if I did, e-mail is often too "active" a medium. Like sending a letter vs. posting on a billboard.) Twitter serves a similar purpose but (a) most of my network does not have an active Twitter account, and (b) Twitter and Facebook serve subtly – but importantly – different social purposes.

3) Since the demise of XMPP and subsequent fragmentation of the IM ecosystem into sundry walled gardens, some (a small minority) of my friends are most readily accessible via Messenger. Strangely enough, SMS seems to have regained footing in this space in my network.

Re: Facebook lost around 2.8M U.S. users under 25 last year

#46

Post by pwinnski »

ictoan wrote: post #18

I'm in my 30s and I use FB a lot to keep up with my friends. However, I have notice that my younger cousins in their 20s never post. So... where do young folks go these days? Instagram? Twitter? Snapchat? I guess I need to talk to my cousins more and find out.

Instagram and Snapchat, for the teens and 20s I know.

Re: Facebook lost around 2.8M U.S. users under 25 last year

#48

Post by Pigo »

btown wrote: post #36
jasode wrote: post #15

Facebook suffered from 2 waves of "Eternal September" [0]: wave 1: the addition of everybody outside your immediate friends and close family. You get the goofy uncle, the distant high school acquaintances, and all the work acquaintances from every previous job that submitted a "friend request" that you didn't reject out of politeness. The newsfeed gets polluted by nonsense such as forwarded memes, politics, and other…

Not to mention the erosion of the idea that it is default-safe to share your social experiences with your group of "friends." Adoption by colleagues and family shifts the tone considerably towards LinkedIn, where one's professional image is paramount - and all that does is make the platform more stressful to use. Facebook does provide tools to segment one's friends into groups to whom content can be privately posted,…

I know this is one tiny use case, but it's one that's bothered me for some time. I can't change my profile picture without it becoming a huge news story for family and "friends" to comment on. I change a little picture of me, remove the event from my timeline, and I still get hokey comments or messages reminding me how bored and lonely everyone I know must be.

I severely miss when it was just a place to chat up a cute girl you seen in college, or find out who's going to see NIN, etc.

Re: Facebook lost around 2.8M U.S. users under 25 last year

#50

Post by fenwick67 »

GCU-Empiricist wrote: post #2

Anybody know a worthwhile open source social network alternative?

Mastodon is pretty active and usable.

Patchwork has some big advantages. It's fully distributed, not federated like Mastodon/diaspora/OStatus, and works offline. But the experience isn't as polished yet. There are still some lingering issues with Patchwork... namely, it only runs on desktop computers, and your identity is tied to one device. But they are actively working on these issues.

Both are really cool and worth checking out.

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