Facebook Is Dead, Long Live Facebook!

If there was one refrain that was echoed time and again throughout 2013, it was the idea that Facebook is dying because teenagers don’t think it’s cool anymore, and instead prefer social media networks where their parents and relatives won’t observe them.

Throughout the year we’ve seen a variety of alternative platforms touted as supposedly being on their way to eclipsing the world’s most popular social network. Snapchat, WhatsApp, Instagram, Tumblr, and even Twitter have all, at one point or another, been heralded as the harbingers of Facebook’s doom.

Study after study this year has told us how because teens are fleeing Facebook and the unwanted eyes of parents, teachers, and other adults, the whole network is basically on the verge of collapse.

Most recently, British anthropologist Daniel Miller published an article on The Conversation, based on a 15-month study of social media use amongst teens in eight countries. Miller’s findings revealed, among other things, that in Britain Facebook is “dead and buried” to 16-to-18-year-olds because they’re “embarrassed even to be associated with it.”

According to the study, this older teen demographic instead prefer to engage on you (you guessed it!) Snapchat, WhatsApp, Instagram, and yes, Twitter.

“Facebook is not just on the slide – it is basically dead and buried,” writes Miller, who is a professor of material culture at University College London. “Where once parents worried about their children joining Facebook, the children now say it is their family that insists they stay there to post about their lives.”

Teenagers are always status conscious and apt to be hungrier than those of us in our 30s or 40s to discover the “next big thing.” So it makes sense that they’d flock to emerging platforms like Snapchat or WhatsApp, regardless of whether such networks are actually better than Facebook.

But eventually today’s teens will grow a bit older, head off to college, and enter into the 18-25-year-old demographic. When this happens, and they assumedly no longer live with their parents and need to avoid unwanted attention, how will they keep in touch with old friends, and yes, even perhaps family members?

At present time, the best social network for connecting over the long-term is still Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg himself has stated that he wants to position the network as a kind of “global utility,“ like the water supply, the power grid, or the Internet itself; something that everyone simply needs to use, regardless of whether it’s cool or not.

Is electricity cool? Is drinking water? No, but that’s not really the point. We need them to survive and that’s basically Zuckerberg and Facebook’s long game.

The network is already so widely integrated across the web that in spite of whether they think it’s cool or not, the fact is that most teenagers still rely on Facebook to some degree or another, and will continue to for the foreseeable future.

So despite what you may have heard this year, Facebook isn’t going anywhere. As 2013 gives way to 2014, it looks poised to remain the world’s preeminent social media network for a good while to come.

via Business 2 Community http://www.business2community.com/facebook/facebook-dead-long-live-facebook-0727180?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=facebook-dead-long-live-facebook