Some 13-Year-Olds Tell Us Why They Think Facebook Stinks

JILLIAN D'ONFRO

Last week, we learned some big news from Facebook's earnings report: Teens don't want to spend their time on Facebook anymore.

Although Facebook CFO David Ebersman said almost all teens in the U.S. have an account, the daily engagement of younger teens has dropped.

Why? We decided to touch base with some younger teens to find out why they personally think that Facebook stinks.

We interviewed them separately, but both of the 13-year-olds, Lucas and Aiden, brought up the same issue almost immediately:

"Well, a lot of the moms are getting on Facebook," Lucas says, "And that definitely has something to do with it."

"We don’t want to be in the same space as our moms," Aiden admits.

Both also mentioned that they cut back on FB because all their friends had done the same thing.

Aiden says that he created his Facebook account before he had a cell phone. On a computer, FB was his best choice, but now that he has a phone, he would rather check out other cooler options, like Snapchat, Vine, and Instagram.

"Facebook takes more time to create and read," he said. "And words are less important than images and videos."

Lucas says that although pretty much everyone he knows has an account, only about 25% of them still use Facebook regularly.

He likes Vine and Instagram because you can just scroll through quickly when you're bored, looking for funny or interesting stuff but not having full conversations. He sees Facebook more for communicating personally with friends, but even then it's not his first choice.

"You’d probably just text them, or a lot of people use Kik," he said. "You can use it with an iPod."

Kik is a messaging service like WhatsApp. It's by no means new, but both Lucas and Aiden said it's very popular with their age-group right now. (Interestingly, neither mentioned Twitter throughout our conversations.)

A recent Pew study shows that 74% of teenagers are mobile Internet users, and Lucas and Aiden both said that almost everyone they know has at least some kind of cell phone.

"I used to check Facebook a lot before I got a smartphone, and now I don’t really check it at all," Aiden said.

Lucas said that the people he sees using Facebook the most are the ones who changed schools; it's still a good way to catch up on someone's life you don't see very often.

"I wouldn’t de-activate," Aiden said. "It’s still a way to connect, I just won't check it often."

Business Insider