Focus Group Reveals Why High Schoolers are Leaving Facebook (and where they're headed next)

By Monica O'Brien | Published: July 8, 2009
from dannysullivan on Flickr

from dannysullivan on Flickr

Just weeks before Facebook openly and aggressively pursued becoming Twitter, I moderated a focus group to discuss social media usage with high school students. We discussed their usage of Facebook, email, texting, and several other forms of communication.

After reading back over my notes, it’s no surprise to me that ReadWriteWeb announced that high school students are fleeing Facebook and grandparents are taking over. Here are some of the results of my focus group, and insight into where the kids are headed next.

What do high school students use most on Facebook?

Groups, Events, Walls, Photos, and Chat. Aside from Chat, these are all some of the most original features Facebook offered. Students will also check messages when they have them, but those are rare and usually come from group administrators.

Facebook Connect. Kids that own their own computer don’t sign out of Facebook. It’s always up and always there for interaction, even as they browse other sites.

Privacy Settings. HS students hate to interact with “weird people” (read: strangers, or non-IRL people). Teachers and coaches are okay, but only because privacy settings are available.

Not on the list (even when prompted): Gifts, Notes, Marketplace, Causes, and the Share button.

What do high school students hate on Facebook?

Applications. They are Facebook spam, unless they are fun games, like MobWars.

Inviting Friends to anything. Students don’t want to be seen as spammers. They are hesitant to share on Facebook, even when they like something.

Also, Fan pages. “Fan pages are for my Mom,” one guy explained. “Unless you’re Barack Obama, I joined his fan page.”

What do high school students share on Facebook?

According to high schoolers, Facebook is for sharing jokes and stupid things with your friends. It’s not for serious communication; that’s what email is for. One girl adds, “My Mom posts about things she cares about; I think it’s a generational gap.”

Surprisingly, they don’t read, share, or “like” status updates. “Only if I’m really bored, I read my news feed,” one guy says, and the rest of the group laughs in agreement.

Where do you get most of your communication?

Texts, email, Facebook. Or Text, Facebook, emails, in those orders, but the former is more popular. Text is for sharing funny reminders with someone, passing the time when you’re bored, or when you need a short conversation (less than 5 minutes). Email is for serious communication, like the college application process. MySpace is dead unless you are looking for music (really? ok) and Twitter is for parents (though I think that’s changing). And blogs? “Facebook is my blog,” they say.

Other cool social media sites include YouTube (for funny videos), FMyLife.com (for schadenfreude), NikePlus social network (for athletes), and Wikipedia (for learning).

Where are high schoolers headed next?

Given that Privacy Settings were essential for High schoolers and students haven’t been adopting the more productive (ahem, better-to-market-to-you-with) features that Facebook has introduced over the last year, I can’t blame the kids for bailing out.

High schoolers might stay on Facebook, but they will use it less and stick to email and texting for most communications. They will also continue using niche social networking sites like FMyLife.com that cater to their specific interests. Until the novelty wears off and the next big thing comes along; kids are fickle after all.

What I don’t understand is why marketers aren’t trying to reach kids through the tried and true methods, like email and texting. They seem to have longevity compared to social networking. If you want to find out what the focus group says about email and texting, subscribe to my blog.

What do you think?

I have several questions:

  • Is Facebook really declining? Or is their demographic simply changing as their numbers grow?
  • Does Facebook really care about their old core demographic? Since they didn’t use the features that help Facebook make money, maybe not.
  • Since Facebook is an evolution of MySpace and Friendster, can any social network survive longer than a few years? If not, what is the goal of building accounts on social networks?
  • Where oh where are those high schoolers going, really?

What do you think? Leave your thoughts in the comments section!

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  • Christina F.
    Interesting findings Monica - they definitley make sense. There has certainly been a shift in demographic for Facebook over the past year. With parents (even grandparents), administrators and corporations joining the site in droves, high school students may be feeling "pushed" out or wanting to maintain that generational gap - "if my parents are doing it than it's not cool." It'll be interesting to watch Facebook as it continues to evolve (almost daily...) and marketers will need to take note of where their targets are headed.

    Thanks for the post!
  • I wonder if teen marketing on Facebook will ever actually work. Teens can't seem to stand it, and it hurts brand reputation whenever companies try it. I also wonder why MySpace was able to pull it off and why Facebook can't - are teens on MySpace just more okay with "clutter"? Does it help that the social network started with banner ads from the beginning? It will definitely be interesting to see how Facebook handles their current growing pains.
  • I'm really curious to see where these kids end up going. Niche social networks? Purely mobile applications? It's going to be interesting to see what marketers end up doing in their never ending struggle to reach the youth/teen demographic.
  • It's tough for marketers because they need to figure out where to put their efforts. So many people are pushing social media, but I don't think it's the answer right now. Teens still like to find out about products through emails, television, and from their friends.
  • But can we engage them in that way elsewhere? Is it legal/ethical to do so? Where should our fields of battle be then?
  • I think there are a lot of opportunities on social media for email-like or text-like communication. Twitter is the obvious one for text, and for something like Facebook, if someone is a fan of your company, it's because they are open to receiving your messages.

    The great thing about all of these mediums is that we can opt out easily. If you think about it, there are few other advertising mediums where that works - television, print ads, radio spots, direct mail, telemarketers, door-to-door sales, and billboards are much harder (if not impossible) to opt out of. That's why I always wonder about the legal/ethical questions when it comes to social media - is what marketers do on social media really any worse than what they have been doing?
  • Interesting data. As someone who uses both pretty equally (MySpace and Facebook), I think there is a comfort level with MySpace, and the 'limited' options actually appeal to a younger crowd.

    Also, what we see as clutter, they see as "personalization" and is a reflection of their desire to be unique. Facebook is....well....bland.
  • Norcross,

    That's a good point. I don't really use MySpace, but then again I didn't use it to begin with - The first social network I joined was Facebook because I was a college student when it first debuted.

    One thing one of the high schoolers said is that Facebook was "too organized." I'm not sure what that means, but maybe it has to do with the "personalization" aspect you mentioned.
  • Your parents being on Facebook is like having your mom stand in the corner at a a party.

    Social networks are for 20 somethings, teenagers don't want to do the things their parents are doing. Facebook lost its cool status about 4 years ago.
  • John,

    I would disagree that social networks are for twentysomethings, but maybe you are speaking from the high schoolers perspective?

    I think you are right about the parents thing, but Gen Y is also closer to their parents than past generations.

    I do agree that Facebook stopped trying to be cool awhile ago, and I think it's cool that they know they're not cool :)
  • Carla Blumenthal
    Facebook is a staple and continues to do what they originally intended: be an online home to offline activities and networks. Facebook demographics have changed, which I think adds to the high schoolers distaste.

    I also think it goes back to the notion that "blogging is dead." In our field, perhaps not. But's it's changing with the adoption of lifestreaming. It doesn't surprise me that high schoolers see Facebook as a "blog," because it has the same features as a personal blog but with a built in network. But I do think they changed their focus when mom jumped on FB and are now looking at more niche, short-lived sites.

    The implications of this changes how we think of "community" for this demographic. Online communities, perhaps in their eyes, can be niche sites with high activity and short lifespan.
  • Carla,

    Interesting comment. I think you are right about the implication on community. Part of me wonders if teenagers have so much access to their friends (through school, work, and extracurriculars) that they don't need to worry so much about their "online" network. They can keep up with their friends in person and via texting back and forth, which would explain why they mostly use Facebook to share funny videos and jokes online.
  • Stephen
    Hi Monica,
    That's a very thought provoking posting. So I read the story you linked to. The facts are not as the story stated them or as you're portraying it. Overall, enrollment among 0-17yo and 18-24yo is up - not as much as 35-54yo but nobody is fleeing anything. Instead, the only decrease is in the number of students who declare their school enrollment. So, 25M 0-24yo's become less than 11M HS/college students (and 14M+ unidentified).
    There's a good question here for a sociologist because 6 months earlier 21M young people became over 13M students (and only 8M unidentified). What happened, why it happened, and what's the benefit would be worth exploration.

    However, the students are *not* fleeing Facebook. In fact, there's about 10% more of them! (The other big change is that the 25M students represent 35% of Facebook when, six months earlier, they represented 54%.)

    As for your study, some of it "rings true" and some of it doesn't match my own experiences. I'm curious - was this a random group of students you interviewed or how were they selected and how have you normalized so that you can make solid, factually-backed statements.
  • Stephen, I do agree with you that the link is misleading. When I read it, I didn't see it as simply students fleeing based on numbers, but saw it more as older people joining at a huge rate and leveling out with students and the overall demographic shifting quickly. Because of that, I believe their is possibility for students to use the network much less, whether they retain their profiles (and Facebook retains their total "numbers") or not.

    I do think a big part of the article is really that students are not affiliating themselves with their schools. Is this because they don't have those affiliations (ie: the non-college kids in that age group are finally migrating to Facebook), or because they don't stick around long enough to engage with the network, or because of some other factor?

    As far as the study goes, it was simply a focus group with high school students. I didn't put them through a selection process or normalize the data, but I think the statements are interesting and insightful to anyone who is not in high school. As with all market research, there will be exceptions to the generalizations, and there is always a way to dispute the data collection. I'd be interested to hear what parts of this don't match your experiences just to gain another perspective.
  • Google Wave is next.. When it comes, Facebook will die, twitter will become a behind-the-scenes dependency, and blogs will be lumped into email..
  • Interesting. As an avid user of both Facebook and Twitter, I hope that's not the case! Early adopters will move on to the next big thing no matter what - it's hard to say what will be "next" and what will "die" at this point. I sometimes wonder if it all comes down to your business model anyway.
  • Great post Monica. My Facebook looks like that mess in the picture. It is utterly ridiculous. I see it as a great tool but get frustrated with the always changing features that hardly work properly. The spam is another issue. The group feature is overplayed and I don't even see the events that I would actually like to attend. That's my Facebook complaint. It seems Twitter is taking strides to limit the noise. What is next? Who knows what the next platform with be. I love to use Facebook messaging in replacement for alot of emails until I started getting blasted with spam. It is nice to be able to learn about the people (through profiles) you are talking with. In alternative to traditional email. I am rambling.... good night!

    bradley will
  • PS your tweetmeme button is not working properly
  • Thanks for letting me know - I'll look into it!
  • I agree that Facebook has a very useful purpose of keeping in touch with people, filtering socializing with acquaintances you aren't close with but would still like to keep up with, etc. I haven't yet seen that replicated on any other social network so far.

    Regarding the picture, I did notice today that Facebook has raised it's limits of only sending information to 20 friends for some of its features. I'm not sure how that will affect the amount of spam you receive, but Facebook will have to find some way to control that if it wants to keep users engaged.

    Thanks for the comment!
  • I remember one thing I seriously disliked about myspace that facebook rarely if ever has is the language of modern teens expressing themselves openly and often very negative. I got onto myspace and later to keep up with my kids comments and activities, and quickly realized there was a lot of junk floating around myspace, not at all around facebook. Sure there is the occasional crass remark usually ignored or stepped on lightly, but not like what I hated about myspace.

    True it is that facebook has become like a huge high school reunion and I say that's great, and am really digging the people I have met and met up with from that and Twitter. Kids today mostly seem to want to engage in social chatter, hanging out and discussing things that for the most part don't interest me, but i love the interaction i have with so many teens on facebook. I think they will continue to use FB, but will also branch out as from myspace to FB, as the uses change.
  • I would agree that FB is becoming more of a tool for parents and less fun for kids...

    My co-workers (all in their 40's-50's) have recently gotten into Facebook- they were just having a discussion yesterday on how much they love the FB quizzes. These are the same ladies who I had to practically force to join FB a few months ago per our employer's request.

    What's funny is my boyfriend is experiencing some FB woes with his mommy. He's 25 and can't get away from her FB questions, updates, quiz results, etc (she is on there pretty much all day). As he put it, "She's taken away any fun Facebook would ever provide" and avoids the site at all costs. He's a huge Twitter nut and is crossing his fingers that she doesn't find that interesting.

    Probably not a coincidence that the youngsters don't want to share their online domain with their parents, grandparents or any potential buzzkills :)
  • mrggfep
    I am 29 years old and I can say that my colleagues and friends say the exact same thing about Facebook, we all hate apps, sharing, likes, and invites. Photo sharing, messages and the Wall are the features we care about.
  • Girl
    That's weird. I'm a teen and I switched from myspace to facebook. my friends are getting into it too.
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