While Facebook may have a “teen problem,” it may not be as bad as a report from iStrategy last week suggested. According to a report from GlobalWebIndex, Facebook’s usage among teens dropped 2% from Q2 to Q4 in 2013. That is not nearly as nearly as sharp a drop as the 25.3% drop among high schoolers from 2011 to 2014 that was reported in iStrategy’s report.
According to the GlobalWebIndex report, teenagers still make up 39% of Facebook’s active users, which makes them the dominant age category. Only YouTube and Tumblr can also boast having teenagers as their largest age category. The report unfortunately doesn’t do a demographic breakdown of Snapchat and other mobile messaging apps that are likely also most used by teens.
Instead of dropping Facebook, teenagers appear to using a variety of social media instead of just one. Instagram, which is owned by Facebook, is the fastest growing social site, growing 23% from Q1 to Q3 in 2013. Reddit, LinkedIn, and Pinterest also made large gains.
Overall, Facebook is still the dominant social network, with more than 80% of respondents saying they had a registered account and more than 50% of respondents saying they were active users. YouTube, Google+, Twitter, and LinkedIn follow Facebook as the next four most used social sites.
