SAN FRANCISCO, Feb 2 (AFP): Sixteen-year-old Owen Fairchild doesn't hang out at Facebook as much as he did when he was just a kid.
It is not that he and his friends are abandoning the social network. They are spreading their love to rival networks like Twitter, Pinterest, SnapChat, Instagram and blogging platform Tumblr.
"I've moved on," the teenager said. "I go to Tumblr a lot more; there is a lot of funny stuff. SnapChat is super-fun because you can send really unattractive pictures of yourself and they will delete after a few seconds."
Contrary to what grownups might think, teens sometimes prefer to catch up on life face-to-face in the real world, he added.
"I think Facebook is still very popular even though some people might be losing interest," said the 11th-grade student at Alameda Community Learning Center, a charter school in Alameda across the bay from San Francisco.
"There is no talk among my friends saying Facebook is for old people."
Facebook, born on a college campus a decade ago, has grown to 1.23 billion active users worldwide.
But as it prepares to celebrate its 10th anniversary, Facebook is now facing challenges in keeping its original base of young users as new social networks vie to be the coolest on the Internet.
A social networking trend set in motion by Facebook has been accelerated by soaring popularity of smartphones that let people share images, videos, thoughts or observations at any moment.
Hot young services such as Pinterest, Twitter and SnapChat have sparked concerns that Facebook is losing teens and may follow predecessor MySpace into social networking obscurity.
Facebook battles to stay young and cool
FE Team | Published: February 03, 2014 00:00:00 | Updated: November 30, 2026 06:01:00
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