Friday we brought you the story “Yes Teenagers Are Leaving Facebook”. During the company’s third quarter results call Facebook CFO David Ebersam confirmed what many had been speculating for months that teenagers are leaving Facebook.
In that story I brought up the fact that many teenagers are leaving Facebook because their parents are on it. As parents become more familiar with the service they also become more familiar with the privacy controls available to their teenagers. Now when parents see that their kids aren’t posting anything on their wall it’s a sure fire sign that they are blocked from viewing the wall and of course that starts causing problems at home.
On Sunday, Business Insider talked to two 13 year olds, Aidan and Lucas who both individually confirmed that parents are a big reason teens (and tweens) are leaving the service.
“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,” Aidan confirmed.
Both younger teenagers admitted that they were also turning away from the social network because their friends were as well. Before they had cell phones Facebook was a natural choice. As Aiden and Lucas, and others their age, started getting cell phones and smartphones, they began turning to other social networks like SnapChat, Vine and Instagram.
Again confirming our suspicions, Aiden and Lucas said that Facebook takes too much time compared to posting on those other services. They also said that they’re using Kik a popular instant messenger service with teenagers.
Aidan told Business Insider that almost everyone he knows has a smartphone. When he got his smartphone he stopped checking Facebook so often. He says that he isn’t going to deactivate his Facebook account though, “…I just won’t check it often”