Teens Loathe Facebook Because of All the Old People and Baby Pics

Facebook is fast becoming the internet’s parent pasture for recently replicated humans who’ve decided that absolutely everyone in their immediate (and not-so-immediate) social circle needs to see a 60-photo series of their new infant hiding behind a sofa to take a dump in its tiny pants. Like a monkey. A small, hairless monkey that knows how to lie and express monosyllabic thoughts. Teens don’t want to see anybody else’s infant monkeyperson, which is why they’re fleeing Facebook forevsies.

The Great Teen Facebook Flight isn’t shocking news, and it’s been pointed out before that younger people are avoiding what is increasingly becoming the social media site for people “of a certain age,” i.e. an old age. A recent (and extensive) European study, though, confirmed that Facebook is “dead and buried” to older European teenagers, who’ve all been fleeing the Facebook galleon for Twitter, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Snapchat. Since European teens are ahead of the curve on everything, it’s only a matter of time before their parochial, arithmetic-challenged American counterparts also set fire to the desiccated corpse of Facebook and perform a ritual dance around it (metaphorically).

From The Guardian:

Researching the Facebook use of 16-18 year olds in eight EU countries, the Global Social Media Impact Study found that as parents and older users saturate Facebook, its younger users are shifting to alternative platforms.

“Facebook is not just on the slide – it is basically dead and buried,” wrote Daniel Miller, lead anthropologist on the research team, who is professor of material culture of University College London.

“Mostly they feel embarrassed to even be associated with it. 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.”

Teens do not care that alternative services are less functional and sophisticated, and they also unconcerned about how information about them is being used commercially or as part of surveillance practice by the security services, the research found.

Teens just want to be as far away from full-blown adults as possible, even on the internet, which means that Facebook will soon be that thing you tell people about when you want to insinuate that you’re old and all the most interesting things about your life have already been posted, liked, and forgotten on Mark Zuckerberg’s Repository of Aging Adults.