Teenagers are leaving Facebook. It’s a tragedy. It means Facebook could never be relevant for B2B marketers now (and no, I’m not talking to the people who thought it never was because I think they’re wrong) because teenagers are your key target audience… Oh hang on, that’s B2C marketers.
At an earnings statement in October last year David Ebersman, Facebook’s CFO, admitted to seeing a decrease in daily users, specifically among younger teens.
Digital agency iStrategyLabs released statistics supporting this in January. It carried out a research project comparing Facebook’s demographic over the last three years. It confirmed Ebersman’s statement and revealed the teenage presence (13-17 year olds) has declined by 25 per cent over the last three years.
Although these findings are specific to America, B2B marketers should be jumping for joy. It’s unlikely the teenage market was particularly big for you, but their parents may be more relevant. Perhaps teenagers may be leaving because they’re fed up of receiving friend requests from their parents, aunts, uncles and the elderly neighbour who used to be their baby sitter. This may be close to the truth as iStrategy also revealed the number of people aged 55 plus using Facebook has increased by 80 per cent over the last three years.
Perhaps it’s time to re-assess what proportion of your audience is using Facebook, you may be pleasantly surprised. Although Facebook’s younger users are moving away from the site, as they graduate, you will hire them and they should be well positioned on how to get the most out of this social media giant.
