Are students really shying away from Facebook?
By Dave Jeyes
Recent data from Facebook’s Social Ads system suggests a shrinking population of high school and college students on the service. But what does this information really tell us about Facebook’s future in terms of demographics?
Shy students?
The most alarming trend put forth in this data is the double digit loss of students on Facebook over the last six months. The number of high school students has declined 26 percent and the college population has shrunk by 21 percent.
Marketers generally use this data to evaluate Facebook in two ways. First marketers want to see whether they can reach the hot demographics such as 18-24 year-olds.
The other factor that marketers attempt to discern is whether Facebook is still growing in terms of influence. The population that many have started looking at is college students that are more likely to be aware of the latest trends.
Invasion of elders
One theory about the sudden drain of students on Facebook is that they’re retreating. Those aged 55 and older are currently the fastest growing demographic, which may be driving kids off the service.
As parents latch onto Facebook and try to use the service to interact with their children, it could drive the younger generation away from the site. However the privacy controls allow savvy students control over who sees their pictures and wall posts, rendering their profiles safe for adult interaction.
The Unaffiliated
Fortunately the answer to this mystery is likely a very simple one. While school affiliation for these populations dropped, the users within the demographics grew substantially.
The number of Facebook users under the age of 18 actually grew over 24 percent during the last six months. With 89 percent of American teens graduating high school, that kind of demographic growth would be impossible without students.
Now that there’s a critical mass of students on Facebook from any given school, their likeliness of affiliating with the school is likely dropping. This trend is likely be driving the 21 percent loss in college students and 15 percent decline in alumni on the site as well.
The good news for marketers is that there are a growing number of demographics accessible through Facebook Social Ads. The bad news is that college students probably don’t want to be advertise their presence to marketers any more than to an old school bully.
Related:
Entry was posted
on Tuesday, July 7th, 2009 at 9:47 am
under
Read more entries by Dave Jeyes.
Stumble It!
July 7th, 2009
Its Shocker for me.. Facebook is always changing itself constantly by taking out different applications and its going to show you how volatile are the these emerging generation. You never know what they want?? I am worried about the kind of advertisments we are going to see in facebook after these revelation…!!