Over 11m teenagers and college students have left Facebook since 2011, an analyst claimed today.
Digital consultancy iStrategy Labs today released a study it says uses data from Facebook’s own Social Advertising platform to come up with the shocking figures.
Experts believe that young people are increasingly abandoning the site to turn to apps such as WhatsUp, Snapchat and others.
According to iStrategy, Facebook has 4,292,080 fewer high-school aged users and 6,948,848 college-aged users than it did in 2011.
Late last year Facebook shares went on a 24 hour rollercoaster after the company’s chief financial officer admitted that teenagers are losing interest in the site.
The dip was attributed to comments made by Facebook’s chief financial officer David Ebersman about a decline in teenagers using the social network site.
‘We did see a decrease in daily users, especially younger teens,’ said Ebersman on a conference call with analysts, although added: ‘Our best analysis of youth engagement in the U.S reveals that usage of Facebook among U.S teens overall was stable.’
Facebook did not release official figures about the current number or users who are teenagers or how substantial this drop was.
Another recent study found teenagers are turning away from Facebook because of oversharing friends and concerns over their parents knowing what they are up to.
It found they are turning to whatsApp and services like Snapchat in increasing numbers – where they are sharing more personal information about themselves than ever before.
Researchers found a big increase in the number of ‘selfies’ being posted, along with information about their school, city and even their mobile phone number.
The research also looked at what teens were posting online – and found photos of themselves and other personal information was the most popular.
Teens told researchers there were too many adults on Facebook and too much sharing of teenage angst and inane details like what a friend ate for dinner.
‘The key is that there are fewer adults, fewer parents and just simply less complexity and less drama,’ said Amanda Lenhart of the Pew Research Center, one of the study’s authors.
‘They still have their Facebook profiles, but they spend less time on them and move to places like Twitter, Instagram and Tumblr.’
