When Teens Abandon Facebook, Do They Predict Social Media's Future?

As social media matures and adoption escalates, many users are finding original social media sites like Facebook less and less interesting. New data from surveys done by Roiworld and OTX and published by eMarketer.com and Mashable suggest that many teen users of Facebook have dropped out in the last six months. Many in the retail and entertainment segments, as well as interactive designers and digital marketers, should be hearing this message.

Based on eMarketer.com’s latest report, teen users appear to have 18 key issues with Facebook as an “aging” social media channel. As I surveyed them, I bunched them together in groups that share similar traits and seem to speak to trends.

Top Five Takeaways From The Latest Survey of Teen Facebook-Users

User Experience of Social Media is Static
45% of lapsed teens made their loss of interest and that “it’s boring” their #1 reason for dropping out. This means that half the teen users polled don’t find a meaningful experience in what is found on Facebook and/or the experience of using/managing their Facebook accounts does not mesh with their lives or behaviors. This is useful data in my opinion because it mirrors the experience many older users have of social media in general – they don’t see a value for the time they expend.

Teen Users of Social Media Feel The “Push”
At 27% and 20% respectively, teen users are speaking loud and clear about their views on using social media for marketing. In my experience, most people I follow on Facebook don’t update their status, change their profile picture, and such all that often, while companies and brand with Fan Pages and the like use this “updating” as a means to pushing message out to their followers and fans. This speaks to an inherent change in thinking that’s required to move social media forward.

Adoption and Retention of Social Media Users is Lacking
These two reasons for abandonment should strike fear in the heart of Facebook and every other social media application because what I hear is that even with a variety of search features, some incredibly granular and user-specific, teen users are not finding who they want to find. Clearly, if a social media application can not offer a robust ways to navigate their own solar system and access and incorporate communities from other solar systems, their adoption and, more importantly, their retention will suffer. Interactive designers and developers need to heed this advice in every project they design.

Make Social Media Experiences Provocative and Useful
Teens suggest in these surveys that they are visiting other websites for other kinds of social network ing experiences offer trendy or unique experiences and features they want. On the surface, the edict here is clear: teen users are seeking something more. There is no doubt that this, in part, is the restless psychological nature of the age group. But there is something more here. Aren’t these users speaking clearly about the shortcomings they perceive and, in effect, broadcasting changes they require as users? I believe they are. As we build social interactive experiences, and advise and coach our clients on how to “use” social media, we need to be sure we understand that current social media technology is only the gateway to what comes next.

Can Social Media Become More Niche and Survive?
One of the very interesting things I took away from this survey was the idea that teens were dropping out of Facebook or using Facebook less because their parents and older demographic groups are using it too; it’s not proprietary or niche enough, while at the same time, some of these teens said that Facebook attracts too many younger people (I assume here these are the older teens reacting to middle-schoolers being on/in the same system). Facebook is going to have to figure this out for themselves over time – the takeaway for me as a designer is the deep, inner psychological itch to feel special, to be catered to, to feel personally involved that we all have. Designers of interactive experiences need to build more personalized experiences into their site architecture, while getting the “age-stamp” of the visual design right in order to satisfy these complex needs for their site visitors.

In general, what’s not debatable is how fickle the 13-17 year-old age group is. However, anyone designing interactive experiences or conceiving digital marketing programs needs to be hooked into this simple fact: today’s teen users of social media are the 20-something and 30-something social media consumers of tomorrow. Learning about why and how teen users are abandoning Facebook enables us to track these social media users and “watch” the accelerated lifecycles of their social media experiences. Their current behavior is both a snapshot of present technologies, uses, and failings, as well as a predictor of future social media systems and user needs.