It wasn't the Facebook it was when I was seven.

August 12, 2013 10:59 AM

"I'm 13 and none of my friends use Facebook."
posted by box (246 comments total)

(spoiler: she uses twitter and tumblr)
posted by yeoz at 11:01 AM on August 12, 2013 [2 favorites]

This 13-year-old girl has 2,500 more followers on Twitter than I do.

*whistles*
posted by Rory Marinich at 11:02 AM on August 12, 2013

It's probably going to be easy to snark on this article, but it just underlines what we've known for years. It's remarkable how quickly Facebook has become the stodgy lame dinosaur. Facebook is your parents now. It's true for me too and hell, I'm 31.
posted by naju at 11:03 AM on August 12, 2013 [25 favorites]

I predict Friendster will become popular with teens once they realize that there's no one there, and they can post their party shots without their parents seeing them.
posted by Admiral Haddock at 11:05 AM on August 12, 2013 [5 favorites]

Haven't you guys heard? The NSA has the hip new social network. Everyone's on it!
posted by entropicamericana at 11:05 AM on August 12, 2013 [40 favorites]

Ironically, Facebook usage among my friends is gradually dwindling except for Facebook Chat. For all its bells and whistles, FB's ending up as just a slightly prettier version of AIM.
posted by Rory Marinich at 11:05 AM on August 12, 2013 [3 favorites]

I think it's a great idea for a website, and I wish Facebook the best of luck.

So many likes, lost forever...like tears in the rain.
posted by jquinby at 11:05 AM on August 12, 2013 [23 favorites]

Facebook is a great way to share photos with my mom's generation.
posted by 2bucksplus at 11:06 AM on August 12, 2013 [10 favorites]

Teens are followers. That’s just what we are. If all my friends are getting this cool new thing called Snapchat, I want it, too! We want what’s trending, and if Facebook isn’t “trending,” teens won’t care.

I would have been deeply embarrassed to describe myself this way, even when I was thirteen.
posted by Sing Or Swim at 11:06 AM on August 12, 2013 [77 favorites]

For my teenagers, Facebook is the new email. They're literally forced to use it just to get homework assignments they miss or to coordinate with sports coaches, etc. I dunno why they don't just use email, but there it is.
posted by GuyZero at 11:06 AM on August 12, 2013 [8 favorites]

I immediately assumed that this kid was David Karp's sibling but apparently he only has a brother.
posted by elizardbits at 11:07 AM on August 12, 2013 [2 favorites]

At least 50% of my Facebook feed is baby pictures and conservative boomer family members. Not sure why I even use the site anymore.
posted by TrialByMedia at 11:07 AM on August 12, 2013 [6 favorites]

What I like about Facebook is that it allows me to easily reach the least computer literate / dependent in my family sphere. And the PTA who never could really work eduspace properly.
posted by tilde at 11:08 AM on August 12, 2013

Related: Hyper social is dying.

Think about the last 20 friends you’ve text messaged. Think about the last 20 friends you’ve grabbed a coffee or beer with. Think of the people you’ve skyped or called (non-professionally) in the last 6 months. I’d say this is your current social network.

Would this group be the same if I asked you the same question a year ago? How about 4 years ago?

In all likelihood the group would be different. I would bet by around 20% per year. It’s an estimate but if even close to true, then your true social network changes significantly every five years.

I’d argue that your true social network is made up of two groups: the core and the circumstantial. The core is in your life in perpetuity (family, true close friends) while the circumstantial changes throughout your life (work friends, school friends, location-based friends, hobby-based friends).

Facebook is almost 10 years old now. They’ve consistently mixed the core relationships with the circumstantial and it’s starting to hurt the experience.

posted by Rory Marinich at 11:08 AM on August 12, 2013 [68 favorites]

I would have been deeply embarrassed to describe myself this way, even when I was thirteen.

That's not even the half of it. There are teens, right now, non-ironically discussing their "personal brand".
posted by naju at 11:08 AM on August 12, 2013 [31 favorites]

jquinby: So many likes, lost forever...like tears in the rain.

I will admit, i was not expecting a Bladerunner reference when I came in here. Now I'm wondering what Cyberpunk would have been like if someone had given the authors a lens to the future, and cringing. I'm seeing a mix of Fahrenheit 451 plus Cyberpunk and am kinda scared how close that would come to the real world.
posted by Canageek at 11:09 AM on August 12, 2013 [2 favorites]

Oh my god this is good but I just can't help chuckling at her repeated references to "a facebook." I think she and her grandmother have more common ground than she imagines.
posted by Navelgazer at 11:09 AM on August 12, 2013 [63 favorites]

Wait, I thought you "were on Facebook," not "had [a?] Facebook"? Am I so out of it I don't even have the right verb?
posted by gottabefunky at 11:09 AM on August 12, 2013 [1 favorite]

I would have been deeply embarrassed to describe myself this way, even when I was thirteen.

That's not even the half of it. There are teens, right now, non-ironically discussing their "personal brand".

Seriously, between this and the constant selfieing I have no idea what the fuck people are thinking anymore.
posted by elizardbits at 11:09 AM on August 12, 2013 [13 favorites]

KIDS THESE DAYS I S2G
posted by elizardbits at 11:09 AM on August 12, 2013 [47 favorites]

I love Facebook, really I do. I hope they can make a comeback and appeal to my peers. I think it's a great idea for a website, and I wish Facebook the best of luck.


I know this wasn't necessarily meant as a big 'and to close, fuck you, Zuckerberg" but it sure is fun to read it that way.

(I think the article makes a really good point that others have made (including my just turned 13 nephew -- but even though I'm 38, I'm pretty sympathetic to it. Most of the reason I haven't removed myself from Facebook is that it's an easy way to occasionally "like" posts so my family knows I'm alive without a weekly phone call.)
posted by MCMikeNamara at 11:10 AM on August 12, 2013 [5 favorites]

I'd always thought twitter was the social network for olds who wanted to pretend they weren't olds

I've always thought Twitter's motto should be "Hey! Notice me, famous person!".
posted by George_Spiggott at 11:10 AM on August 12, 2013 [31 favorites]

She's really shooting her Klout right in the foot, there.
posted by kafziel at 11:10 AM on August 12, 2013 [9 favorites]

Ironically, Facebook usage among my friends is gradually dwindling except for Facebook Chat. For all its bells and whistles, FB's ending up as just a slightly prettier version of AIM.

All means of internet communication eventually just become instant messagers

THE PERCEIVED AGE OF A SOCIAL MEDIA/INTERNET STUFFS USERBASE.

From Oldest to youngest

Facebook
Livejournal
Twitter
Vine
Tumblr
That Club Penguin Thing.
posted by The Whelk at 11:10 AM on August 12, 2013 [9 favorites]

G+ - Howling specters in moonlit wastes.
posted by The Whelk at 11:11 AM on August 12, 2013 [36 favorites]

All I know about club penguin is what the permaban screen looks like.
posted by elizardbits at 11:12 AM on August 12, 2013 [19 favorites]

G+ - Howling specters in moonlit wastes.

Local historians are protesting the removal of the social network in Grove Park that no one acknowledges or speaks about.
posted by Going To Maine at 11:13 AM on August 12, 2013 [20 favorites]

My daughter, who is fourteen, would agree that for the teen set Facebook is old and busted and Twitter is the new hotness.

She would also confirm that she would be embarrassed by the fact that I just used the terms "old and busted" and "new hotness."
posted by jscalzi at 11:14 AM on August 12, 2013 [33 favorites]

That's not even the half of it. There are teens, right now, non-ironically discussing their "personal brand".

Um. I do this.

It's not a new behavior, either. Only the terminology has changed. The questions of who people think you are, how they perceive you, what sorts of connections you form with them, are older than Oedipus.
posted by Rory Marinich at 11:15 AM on August 12, 2013 [2 favorites]

I think of G+ more like an abandoned time share, built in a free-enterprise zone on some forgotten coast. There are lizards on the wall and the courtyard is full of dead leaves and scraps of paper. No one comes any more, except the old man who gathers the tamarind pods to sell in the market.

Every night the jungle gets a little closer, and every day the ruins surrender a little more.
posted by jquinby at 11:15 AM on August 12, 2013 [138 favorites]

I haven't been on Facebook for a couple of years now, but this past weekend my wife and I had a friend visit and a non-insubstantial amount of her time with us was spent monitoring FB drama and/or putting out FB-related fires. Seemed like a lot of work and mostly not much fun. The layout also seemed incomprehensible compared to a few years back, but that might just be my unfamiliarity with it.
posted by The Card Cheat at 11:15 AM on August 12, 2013

Also disagree with The Whelk that Livejournal is younger than Facebook.

Livejournal is for Olds. Awesome Olds but Olds nonetheless.
posted by Rory Marinich at 11:15 AM on August 12, 2013 [7 favorites]

I'm pretty sure the only way someone her age uses the word livejournal is with the word "what's" in front of it.
posted by George_Spiggott at 11:17 AM on August 12, 2013 [15 favorites]

She would also confirm that she would be embarrassed by the fact that I just used the terms "old and busted" and "new hotness."

You should tell her that you're not a regular dad, you're a cool dad, and then cry because she won't recognize a Mean Girls quote because it's 10 years old.

oh god it's 10 years old
posted by elizardbits at 11:18 AM on August 12, 2013 [40 favorites]

In my experience, G+ is hilariously unpopular, but Google Hangouts are actually catching on somewhat. Google merged their old Talk client with Hangouts, so it's a mix of old people who used Gtalk from Gmail or whatever, and kids who like the massively multiplayer online video chats.
posted by Rory Marinich at 11:19 AM on August 12, 2013

No one comes any more, except the old man who gathers the tamarind pods to sell in the market.

And the trillions of photos being automagically sync'ed there from every Android phone on the planet.

Even if they just get downloaded and then posted to facebook.
posted by GuyZero at 11:19 AM on August 12, 2013

Kid discovers she likes to do things differently than her parents. Film at 11.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 11:19 AM on August 12, 2013 [1 favorite]

When is the first large wave of kids who have had all their pictures and videos broadcast from birth turning 13 and what will they think.
posted by bleep at 11:19 AM on August 12, 2013 [1 favorite]

Also disagree with The Whelk that Livejournal is younger than Facebook.

Proabably depends on whether you date it from when it started or when it became available to non-students
posted by LionIndex at 11:20 AM on August 12, 2013

"I'm 13 and none of my friends use Facebook."

Potential responses:

- The kids are all right.
- So I'm gonna be that Cool Dad That Gets It
- I'm glad I sold my FB stock moments after it was given to me
posted by DU at 11:20 AM on August 12, 2013 [1 favorite]

naju: That's not even the half of it. There are teens, right now, non-ironically discussing their "personal brand".

My parents discuss my Dad's personal brand as a beer blogger, and how it would be diluted if he put non-craft beer related stuff on his Twitter feed.

Sokka shot first : I'm actually surprised she uses twitter. I'd always thought twitter was the social network for olds who wanted to pretend they weren't olds (i.e., me and all my friends.)
When I joined Twitter on Halloween, 2008 it seemed to be mostly people in their early 20s, with a good chunk of 30s mixed in. It seems to have aged with me to mid-twenties through late 30s, with a good chunk of older people. However, this is heavily biased based on who I follow. My big disappointment is how much more professional it has gotten. It used to be this crazy, free-wheeling place where you had War of the Worlds II, crazy discussions with random people, etc, Wil Wheaton was its big star, etc. Now everyone is getting verified accounts, using real names, the President of the US is on it, and yeah.

In other news, I really regret some of the stuff I posted on it in 2008-2009, because I'm sure that is archived out there somewhere and will come back to haunt me when I'm trying to become a prof. I mean, I wasn't posting drunk photos of myself, since um, I'm really boring, but political rants from the most angry time of my life? Oh yeah, and discussions from when I was discovering my sexuality once I'd met women interested in me? Eppp. On the other hand, I managed to get secrity clearance once, in 2010, so hey.

jquinby: I think of G+ more like an abandoned time share, built in a free-enterprise zone on some forgotten coast. There are lizards on the wall and the courtyard is full of dead leaves and scraps of paper. No one comes any more, except the old man who gathers the tamarind pods to sell in the market.

Every night the jungle gets a little closer, and every day the ruins surrender a little more.

The big exception to this is the Tabletop Gaming community, which has embraced it whole-heartedly. Hangouts are great for gaming, and it is a really good way to share links to blogs and things, and coordinate gaming times and such.
posted by Canageek at 11:20 AM on August 12, 2013

"I'm 13 and none of my friends use Facebook."

Meanwhile, in a bunker buried deep somewhere in Menlo Park, a team of Zuckerberg's best people are hard at work figuring out a way to monetize young people's indifference to their product.
posted by Atom Eyes at 11:21 AM on August 12, 2013 [10 favorites]

G+ is like a restaurant that brings you your food, then as you're taking the first bite, takes it back to the kitchen to modify it a bit and add or remove ingredients. Two or three times. It doesn't matter whether the food is any good: you're still never going back.
posted by George_Spiggott at 11:21 AM on August 12, 2013 [6 favorites]

elizardbits:

Irony: Daughter loves loves loves Mean Girls. Also, Daria. Also, Breakfast Club and Ferris Bueller.

Also, some weird anime called Hetalia, because some things are meant to be incomprehensible to me, and therefore hers alone.
posted by jscalzi at 11:22 AM on August 12, 2013 [9 favorites]

I'm almost 40 and I don't go to bingo or to movies at 2pm like my parents. When I was 35 I thought it would be so cool to be old so I could go to bingo. Now I am old and I don't even go. Sometimes I think "It is 2pm, I should grab dinner or go to see a nice film" but then I don't. I don't know why this is. I thought it would be cool but I never do it.
posted by Ad hominem at 11:22 AM on August 12, 2013 [14 favorites]

In some ways, could Facebook become a phenomenon that is kept alive by a specific age-based group of people? I have no interest in The Moody Blues, The Rolling Stones, or Styx, but these bands tour and make tons of money.

If Facebook stops trying to be the "in thing" and targets the site to heavy users who are currently 20-40 years old, they might be able to avoid going the way of Friendster or Myspace.
posted by reenum at 11:22 AM on August 12, 2013 [2 favorites]

It's anthropomorphized countries doing the sex.
posted by elizardbits at 11:23 AM on August 12, 2013 [9 favorites]

Social network demographics in 2012. According to this survey, the average age of users on Facebook is 40.5 years, the third highest on their list, next to Yelp and Linkedin.
posted by Numenius at 11:23 AM on August 12, 2013 [6 favorites]

Hetalia is incomprehensible to everyone.
posted by asperity at 11:23 AM on August 12, 2013

ANYWAY everyone knows that the new awesome thing is the swimming anime.
posted by elizardbits at 11:23 AM on August 12, 2013

On review, let's adjust my age band to heavy users currently 30-60 years old. You get the tail end of the baby boomers, and the top end of Generation X.
posted by reenum at 11:25 AM on August 12, 2013 [1 favorite]

Facebook's destiny is to be AOL. That is the ultimate end of all walled gardens.
posted by empath at 11:29 AM on August 12, 2013 [28 favorites]

Facebook was just this thing all our parents seemed to have.

and...

none of my other friends do.

This is always how it is. From the days of livejournal, to friendster, to myspace, to facebook, to whatever next. The youth will always try to find a "special place", and as word spreads, more and more people use it, eventually leading to parents and older people, which makes it less cool, so they then search for something "new". it will happen with all those sites they think are cool, and ones that haven't been made yet.

I know i use facebook more for connecting with lost friends, actual friends, not thousands of whoever clicks on me. Oh well, i'm also over 40, so i no longer care if i'm cool or not. ;)

the new awesome thing is the swimming anime.

Free is strange. I do love some anime, but man, that's one tailor made for fujoshi.
posted by usagizero at 11:29 AM on August 12, 2013 [1 favorite]

Every time you people write something like "some weird anime called Hetalia" I'm forced to do a double take.
posted by 2bucksplus at 11:30 AM on August 12, 2013

It's remarkable how quickly Facebook has become the stodgy lame dinosaur.

Visually speaking, it's really boring. I like Google Plus a lot more. It looks beautiful, and, what's more, my comments are not published to my contacts' streams. Only problem is that while I have a similar number of contacts on G+ as I do on Facebook, none of my G+ contacts are people I actually know.
posted by KokuRyu at 11:31 AM on August 12, 2013 [3 favorites]

Now, when we are old enough to get Facebook, we don’t want it. By the time we could have Facebooks, we were already obsessed with Instagram. Facebook was just this thing all our parents seemed to have.

And then Facebook bought Instagram . . .
posted by ultraviolet catastrophe at 11:31 AM on August 12, 2013 [4 favorites]

Wait...what's wrong with movies at 2pm? Back when theaters were something people went to and I was in my early 20s, I did that all the time. You can watch a movie AND have a normal evening at home.
posted by DU at 11:32 AM on August 12, 2013 [3 favorites]

I thought it would be cool but I never do it.

You omitted the vital step of first moving to Boca.
posted by elizardbits at 11:32 AM on August 12, 2013 [2 favorites]

She would also confirm that she would be embarrassed by the fact that I just used the terms "old and busted" and "new hotness."

I'm 46, and I am embarrassed for you that you said that.
posted by thelonius at 11:33 AM on August 12, 2013 [10 favorites]

Is there a web app that will let me drag and drop photos from Aperture or Lightroom and automatically re-scale and upload to Facebook, G+, Twitpic, Flickr and Picasa all at once, so the relatives stop griping at me that they never see any baby pics?

Because I'd really like one. I'm never on any of those sites otherwise.
posted by Slap*Happy at 11:34 AM on August 12, 2013 [2 favorites]

It's remarkable how quickly Facebook has become the stodgy lame dinosaur.

Visually speaking, it's really boring.

I don't think teens are responding to the graphics.

Imagine you are 13. There's park your parents and all your friends parents go to that has some play structures and whatnot and the moms all hang out in their sweaters and the dads talk about cars. You used to like this place because the slides went around and around, not just straight down! But the park is only about 1 acre and EVERYBODY is there. You want to hang out with your friends somewhere COOL. Not a walled garden filled with parents.
posted by DU at 11:34 AM on August 12, 2013 [7 favorites]

Wait...what's wrong with movies at 2pm? Back when theaters were something people went to and I was in my early 20s, I did that all the time. You can watch a movie AND have a normal evening at home.

Nothing at all. I wish I went to the movies at 2pm more often.


The thing with facebook it kind of fait accompli as Zuckerberg wants everyone in the known universe to use it. Once you got your grandma commenting on your status you don't want to be there anymore.
posted by Ad hominem at 11:35 AM on August 12, 2013 [1 favorite]

Also disagree with The Whelk that Livejournal is younger than Facebook.

Yeah I have LJ accounts older than Facebook.
posted by elsietheeel at 11:35 AM on August 12, 2013 [4 favorites]

I still have a Myspace. Next big thing: Return to the Valley of the Myspace?

(And that has always been the proper social network idiom, right, 'I have a [whatever]'?)
posted by fikri at 11:37 AM on August 12, 2013

You want to hang out with your friends somewhere COOL. Not a walled garden filled with parents.

For the 10 year-old set, it's Minecraft + Skype.
posted by KokuRyu at 11:37 AM on August 12, 2013 [7 favorites]

Social network demographics in 2012. According to this survey, the average age of users on Facebook is 40.5 years, the third highest on their list, next to Yelp and Linkedin.

I'm not entirely clear on how they collected their data, and they are reporting it differently than Pew, but here are Pew Internet's latest numbers for Twitter:
30% of 18-29 year-old US internet users use Twitter
17% of 30-49 year-olds
13% of 50-64 year-olds
5% of 65+

Among adults, Twitter has always had the most popularity with the 18-29 age group since Pew started tracking it in 2010. Twitter also skews heavily African-American, interestingly.

In a different social media report they find that Instagram (28% use), Tumblr (13% use) and Facebook (86% use) are also most popular among 18-29s, though the numbers for Facebook have been getting closer. Pinterest interestingly is tied with 19% of 18=29 and 20-49 year-olds using the site.

They have teen numbers in different studies so I'll have to look for them separately.
posted by DiscourseMarker at 11:38 AM on August 12, 2013 [3 favorites]

Look at something like Twitter, where it’s four buttons — people like the "simple" design better.

The next Steve Jobs.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 11:39 AM on August 12, 2013

Basically, Facebook was a party. And then your grandmother and creepy uncle showed up. That's not generally a party kids want to stay at for long.
posted by lattiboy at 11:39 AM on August 12, 2013 [5 favorites]

13 year olds were never the target demo for Facebook to begin with, were they? It's still useful to me because unlike (for instance) most children in middle school, I have close friends who live in places that are not in my school district and I like to stay in touch with them. My daily FB contacts overlap with my daily in-person contacts almost not at all. I suspect that the opposite is true for the middle school set, which is why Instagram seems sufficient to her - because she has nothing to say to her contacts that cannot be said tomorrow in the cafeteria.

In summary, who gives a flying fudge what little kids do or do not find useful? Like most goods and services of every kind, social networks weren't created by kids and are not meant to have kids as their primary beneficiaries. They are children. To paraphrase Mr. CK, nothing most of them do or say will be important in any way for years to come.
posted by 1adam12 at 11:39 AM on August 12, 2013 [12 favorites]

Insert NeXT joke here.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 11:40 AM on August 12, 2013 [1 favorite]

And now that Yahoo owns Tumblr everything old is new again. "Thirteen year olds flock to Yahoo!"
posted by 2bucksplus at 11:40 AM on August 12, 2013 [1 favorite]

For the 10 year-old set, it's Minecraft + Skype.

I have a fairly wide age range to sample from, but they are mostly non-social. The oldest one uses Skype and plays Minecraft, but not together. He has a Facebook account he never uses and I don't think his friends do either.
posted by DU at 11:40 AM on August 12, 2013

Rory Marinich: "That's not even the half of it. There are teens, right now, non-ironically discussing their "personal brand".

Um. I do this.

It's not a new behavior, either. Only the terminology has changed. The questions of who people think you are, how they perceive you, what sorts of connections you form with them, are older than Oedipus."

It's not a new behavior, no, but people react badly to that terminology because, at best, it's a dehumanizing metaphor that implies that the "connections you form with [other people]" are mostly unidirectional and entirely self-serving, and, at worst, it's just a cargo cult phrase born out of our really problematic tendency towards fetishizing corporations. We'd be better served by continuing to think about identity in terms of identity and not brand.
posted by invitapriore at 11:41 AM on August 12, 2013 [56 favorites]

Meanwhile, in a bunker buried deep somewhere in Menlo Park, a team of Zuckerberg's best people are hard at work figuring out a way to monetize young people's indifference to their product.

Probably true. The smartest thing Facebook can do at this point is quietly introduce an anti-Facebook via a secretive shell company that appears to be a small DIY operation set up by college kids.
posted by naju at 11:42 AM on August 12, 2013 [12 favorites]

The questions of who people think you are, how they perceive you, what sorts of connections you form with them, are older than Oedipus.

Having questions about people perceive you is very different from talking about your "personal brand". If you really do that, you may want to re-evaluate your life.
posted by DU at 11:43 AM on August 12, 2013 [2 favorites]

Probably true. The smartest thing Facebook can do at this point is quietly introduce an anti-Facebook via a secretive shell company that appears to be a small DIY operation set up by college kids.

Or just buy it when it happens organically.
posted by 2bucksplus at 11:43 AM on August 12, 2013 [2 favorites]

13 year olds aren't on facebook because they got kicked off it when they signed up when they were 9 and dumb enough to admit to it and so they decided they hate it.

In other news, many of them actually are on facebook, but pretending to be 17 because these are the ones who were smart enough to go straight back and open a new account with a fake age.
posted by jacalata at 11:44 AM on August 12, 2013 [1 favorite]

Cows usually stop discussing their brand after the pain wears off.
posted by George_Spiggott at 11:44 AM on August 12, 2013 [14 favorites]

Or just buy it when it happens organically.

I doubt that would work though, because buyouts are lame and the Facebook brand is lame and anything it touches is by extension lame.
posted by naju at 11:46 AM on August 12, 2013

This might be true for the 13-year-olds, but I can assure you that the older teens are very heavily into Facebook. I've got one about to go to college and Facebook is integral to the process and is even promoted by the school. There's been an "incoming freshman at college X 2013" page for a while dribbling out useful information, discussion about which dorm is "better", facebook-stalking your newly assigned roommate, etc.
posted by Runes at 11:47 AM on August 12, 2013 [1 favorite]

That's not even the half of it. There are teens, right now, non-ironically discussing their "personal brand".

Jeez I really find such uses of the term 'brand' annoying. Unless you're, say, Michael Jordan or Martha Steward or some other person with, y'know, an actual brand, you don't have a brand...

I suppose I can see why someone might think s/he needs this kind of metaphorical use of 'brand'...and my annoyance is probably just a result of my being easily annoyed. But on top of its (alleged, by me) annoyingness, this metaphor seems to play into the businessification of everything... And that annoys me, too.

Goddang kids, get off my etc. etc.
posted by Fists O'Fury at 11:48 AM on August 12, 2013

Joe Banks, thirty-two years young, has come to this social networking site every day for the past seventeen years, to generate and view content. But last month, Joe made a discovery. The content... was gone. Some say the content went to Twitter. Others say, Snapchat. And some people think, that Joe used to sit down there, [camera moves to Facebook chat] near that content. But it could be, that there's just no room in this modern world, for an old man... and his Facebook
posted by codacorolla at 11:49 AM on August 12, 2013 [21 favorites]

In summary, who gives a flying fudge what little kids do or do not find useful?

I used to share this firm belief until the day I had the most terrible epiphany of my life: one day the President of the United States is going to be some smartass whippersnapper who is younger than me.
posted by elizardbits at 11:49 AM on August 12, 2013 [7 favorites]

Based on Pew Internet's 2012 data, Facebook still predominates among teens (94% use Facebook, 24% use Twitter), but Twitter is growing fast - only 12% of teens reported using Twitter in 2011. I fully expect that we will see continued growth in Twitter usage among teens, and maybe even a decline of Facebook usage. But basically, the author of this article has hit the nail on the head - social networks are for being social, so you go where your friends are. If Twitter hits a critical mass in a few years (and it may already be there for African-American teens, 39% of whom use Twitter), then you could see a mass abandonment of Facebook by younger users.
posted by DiscourseMarker at 11:51 AM on August 12, 2013 [1 favorite]

Unless you're, say, Michael Jordan or Martha Steward or some other person with, y'know, an actual brand, you don't have a brand...

Martha Stewart just fired all her brand managers.
posted by notyou at 11:53 AM on August 12, 2013 [7 favorites]

1adam12: 13 year olds were never the target demo for Facebook to begin with, were they? It's still useful to me because unlike (for instance) most children in middle school, I have close friends who live in places that are not in my school district and I like to stay in touch with them. My daily FB contacts overlap with my daily in-person contacts almost not at all. I suspect that the opposite is true for the middle school set, which is why Instagram seems sufficient to her - because she has nothing to say to her contacts that cannot be said tomorrow in the cafeteria.

Interestingly, my daughter has kept up friendships with several kids whom she no longer goes to school with through (primarily) Instagram, Snapchat and (ye Gods, the name) ooVoo. When I was her age, if you changed schools, you basically wrote all those old friends off and got all new ones. Maybe you would write them a letter or call them on the phone a couple of times, but it never lasted. For my generation, the rise of Facebook was all about re-connecting will long-lost friends and exes, but I don't think my daughter will have long-lost friends. I guess maybe when they all move to a new social network and they don't have each others new usernames or whatever?
posted by Rock Steady at 11:55 AM on August 12, 2013 [2 favorites]

Once you got your grandma commenting on your status you don't want to be there anymore.

My 90 year old grandma has an iPhone and sends me texts all the time.

If my cousins teach her how to use Facebook then yeah, I'm done.
posted by elsietheeel at 11:55 AM on August 12, 2013

In some ways, could Facebook become a phenomenon that is kept alive by a specific age-based group of people?

It always has been; it grabbed a huge cross-section of a particular demographic by virtue of how it conducted its roll-out (via various colleges, starting with the Ivies and going down from there), and once it had gotten the college kids it also got highschool kids, because things that college kids do are very cool when you're in highschool ... and to a certain extent they picked up some adults who were outside the original target audience, but I doubt they ever got as much penetration into any other demographic outside of that initial group.

I suspect if you were to do a frequency plot of age of Facebook's userbase, the peak of that particular bell curve shifts approximately one year to the right, every year.

Most people can see this happening in their personal friend feed -- it goes from being largely comprised of party pics and gap-year crap to "my apartment", "my house", "my vacation", "my dog", "my wedding", "my kids" (and then you stop looking because seriously nobody wants to see baby pictures, no one, unless it's your baby, we're all just being polite) -- but I think it's happening with the service as a whole. At least if I am correct in thinking that it's not the social must-have that it briefly was at one point and more and more younger people are opting out in favor of other services.

Either FB rages against this and tries to cater to kids, eventually alienating the demographic that propelled them, or they ride the wave all the way to its eventual conclusion in ~60 years. I think they're more likely to try for the former, because the 18-24 demographic is what advertisers traditionally want more than anything, and Facebook is really just an advertising platform now, but it would certainly be more interesting if they went for the latter and just said "hey, these are our users, we'll do what they want and figure out how to monetize it". And you'd have a distinct "Facebook generation" comprised largely of people who were in college or grad school circa 2003-2008 (or whenever it became uncool) with people older and younger than that doing their own things.

But corporate America doesn't allow that sort of limited goal setting; it's grow exponentially or die trying, so they'll probably die. "Meh," as the kids (used to) say. No huge loss.
posted by Kadin2048 at 11:57 AM on August 12, 2013 [7 favorites]

@RockSteady I think your daughter will have friends that don't get "lost" per se, but that she just loses touch with. She'll add her classmates, but there will be some that she stops talking to, some that change, and some that don't like her changes.

It will be less of that cutting of the ties that graduation and school changes bring, and more of a gradual experience.
posted by ceol at 12:00 PM on August 12, 2013

I'm old and no one cares what I think or use.

It's kinda liberating, in a way.
posted by tommasz at 12:01 PM on August 12, 2013 [7 favorites]

I've been using Facebook since 2007, and the median age has always been 40 AFAIK. Once opened to the general public it was all about reconnecting with classmates, and it demolished Classmates.com overnight.
posted by KokuRyu at 12:01 PM on August 12, 2013 [1 favorite]

I wonder how much of this applies to the non-English speaking world. Looking at the users who have "liked" one of my pages, two-thirds are under the age of 24, and only about 10% speak English as their primary language.
posted by malocchio at 12:02 PM on August 12, 2013

So yeah hrmh. I never was on Facebook. Did I miss anything? Apparently not.
posted by Namlit at 12:02 PM on August 12, 2013 [1 favorite]

If Facebook stops trying to be the "in thing" and targets the site to heavy users who are currently 20-40 years old, they might be able to avoid going the way of Friendster or Myspace.

The huge problem with this is that Facebook is a publicly traded company, and the current stock price is completely dependent on the expectation that Facebook is a growth company that will get more and more popular. If Facebook announced tomorrow that they expected to lose users to other sites and were planning to become more of a niche social network, the stock price would plummet. They have to keep pushing for growth otherwise investors will find some other "next big thing" to invest in, so just treading water isn't going to cut it.
posted by burnmp3s at 12:03 PM on August 12, 2013 [1 favorite]

For some reason, every time I see "ooVoo" I think "vulva". I have no idea why.
posted by Slothrup at 12:06 PM on August 12, 2013 [1 favorite]

the current stock price is completely dependent on the expectation that Facebook is a growth company that will get more and more popular.

Any analyst will tell you that Facebook has peaked or plateaued. There isn't going to be any more expontial growth in membership.

The stock price is dependent on the assumption that Facebook's revenues will increase, and so far they've done an adequate job monetizing the platform. On the down side, for businesses, Facebook's ad offerings are very Mickey Mouse and are not particularly compelling in the long term.
posted by KokuRyu at 12:06 PM on August 12, 2013

On that subject, the fact that Facebook's big exciting plan is basically 15 second television ads should be troubling.
posted by 2bucksplus at 12:06 PM on August 12, 2013

Yeah, I have a 14 year old, and twitter is huuuuuge. She has like seven different accounts for different fandoms, and that's where all the info goes down about which 1D person is doing a twitcam when, and where 5 Seconds of Summer's hotel is, and which Ariana Grande song leaked. And it's full of drama, too—fans being "thirsty" for getting "noticed" on twitter, ganging up on the people who get @-ed by 1D/5SoS/Ariana too much, getting sent to twitter jail for spamming for follows during follow-sprees. Sometimes this spills over into tumblr, and recently into text (she was on a 25-person group text chat that pretty much broke her phone between constant notifications and gossip). But twitter is the locus for her fandom stuff, and she's even connected IRL with some of her twitter friends who've come to town for concerts and the 1D pop-up store and etc. Instagram is still a thing, and she and her friends also love to Vine, but twitter is where everything seems to be happening for her and her cohort these days. It's also interesting to watch her manage her social presentation, as she has a public-facing twitter account that school friends and teachers and adults in her life follow, and that one is sedate and calm and rarely updated—while her "secret" twitter accounts (and backup accounts for when she's in twitter jail for follow-spamming) area a constant stream of posts and retweets and mentions.

For my 10.5 year old, though, it's all about Skypecrafting (minecraft + Skype), and that's pretty much the extent of his online social interaction at this point.
posted by mothershock at 12:10 PM on August 12, 2013 [12 favorites]

If you google "Facebook is..." check out what Google suggests...
posted by cell divide at 12:12 PM on August 12, 2013 [3 favorites]

One of the irritants of Google Plus is that it seems like 25% of the posts talk about how great Google Plus is.
posted by KokuRyu at 12:13 PM on August 12, 2013 [3 favorites]

My mom is using my dad's name and photo as a sockpuppet on Facebook. I wish I were joking.
posted by 4ster at 12:15 PM on August 12, 2013 [10 favorites]

In case you were starting to feel a little sorry for those poor, hapless Facebook execs, this Vanity Fair photo spread from Sean Parker's recent lavish, Tolkien-styled wedding in the Redwoods might help fire up the old schadenfreude.
posted by Atom Eyes at 12:15 PM on August 12, 2013 [1 favorite]

Didn't we have a post a couple years ago talking about how this whole Twitter use among teens was overblown, and they were all on Facebook? It was something like an interview with a 14-year old boy? Does anyone else remember this? I've tried a site-search for it, but the terms are too common.
posted by Canageek at 12:16 PM on August 12, 2013

my friends post photos that get me in trouble with those parents.

I just wanna say that years ago I said self-censorship would be the death knell for FB. I gotta go look up that old comment....
posted by mrgrimm at 12:17 PM on August 12, 2013

Well, in case you were worried this wasn't the Facebook Apocalypse, I present to you the evidence that my 28 year old son finally friended me on FB.


yup.
posted by St. Alia of the Bunnies at 12:17 PM on August 12, 2013 [2 favorites]

Didn't we have a post a couple years ago talking about how this whole Twitter use among teens was overblown, and they were all on Facebook?

I was just gonna say didn't we have a thread that said the opposite recently, about that Hudson school and Twitter harrassment ... ? (I guess I didn't see that here ...)

Anyway, related:

'At Hudson High School, Facebook is yesterday’s news — "Most of Facebook is just people saying, 'Is anyone still on Facebook?'" one student says'

Sex, lies, and subtweets: Ohio high school tormented by Twitter gossip

For my teenagers, Facebook is the new email.

Yep, and it actually serves that purpose pretty well.

I dunno why they don't just use email,

Yes you do. Look at your inbox.
posted by mrgrimm at 12:20 PM on August 12, 2013 [2 favorites]

As said above, FB is for college kids, who use the shit out of it. Little kids change brand alliances all the time. What people like in college stays around in their lives almost forever. That teens aren't using FB to post embarrassing pictures is like problem 147 on their list of problems that need to get fixed.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 12:20 PM on August 12, 2013 [1 favorite]

I don't see how this is a problem. I use Facebook to keep in touch with friends from uni (when Facebook was new), high school (pre-Facebook, but much of my cohort picked it up), and early-20s travels. I don't really WANT to be on the same social network as 13-year-olds.

In other words, those kids can stay off my damn lawn.

I don't actually have, or want to have, a lawn.
posted by snorkmaiden at 12:20 PM on August 12, 2013

This girl reminds me of the 13-year-old Weibo sensation who broke up with his girlfriend and posted the immortal words:

"Feel so tired. Will never love again."

I love Facebook, really I do. I hope they can make a comeback and appeal to my peers. I think it's a great idea for a website, and I wish Facebook the best of luck.

"Good luck with your... video game!"

Sean Parker's recent lavish, Tolkien-styled wedding in the Redwoods

which The Zuck did not attend. Good for him.
posted by fatehunter at 12:22 PM on August 12, 2013 [1 favorite]

Fuck Facebook. It's just one big Honey Trap for the NSA / CIA.
posted by Monkeymoo at 12:22 PM on August 12, 2013 [4 favorites]

I would have been deeply embarrassed to describe myself this way, even when I was thirteen.

yeah, as cool as it is to say "hey, this 13-year-old got published on Mashable" ... this article is not very good.
posted by mrgrimm at 12:23 PM on August 12, 2013 [2 favorites]

I've always thought Twitter's motto should be "Hey! Notice me, famous person!".

This, sadly, does not work. For some time I bombarded Kevin James' Twitter feed with my (almost certainly) priceless suggestion that the Richard Pryor classic Brewster's Millions was ripe for a James-esque hapless-guy-comes-good makeover, entitled (of course, allowing for inflation) Brewster's Billions. The last time I checked this was not in production.
posted by specialbrew at 12:25 PM on August 12, 2013 [4 favorites]

For some reason, every time I see "ooVoo" I think "vulva". I have no idea why.

"ooVoo" looks like Kilroy to me. I can't unsee it.
posted by Metroid Baby at 12:26 PM on August 12, 2013 [3 favorites]

I can't wait until I'm old enough to get a FidoNet.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 12:27 PM on August 12, 2013 [4 favorites]

I hate to be all "off the lawn," but unless they're like, Tavi Gevinson, most things 13 year olds say are not that interesting.

I'm trying to build up my tumblr, but most people who end up following me are teens early 20s unless I know them, and they don't always "get" the stuff I write about. Then most of the people on FB are people I really know IRL and are 25-42 or so, and like stuff from tumblr I post on FB but don't come to the tumblr to talk about it.

I'm like in some wasteland or something.
posted by sweetkid at 12:27 PM on August 12, 2013

I was off Facebook for about a year after my cousin's wife started insulting my husband on my feed about some political disagreement. I got back on it about six months ago for the sole purpose of not appearing to be some Luddite hermit while I'm job-hunting. I honestly have no other purpose for it. All the fun stuff happens on Twitter and tumblr.
posted by desjardins at 12:27 PM on August 12, 2013

jquinby: "I think of G+ more like an abandoned time share, built in a free-enterprise zone on some forgotten coast. There are lizards on the wall and the courtyard is full of dead leaves and scraps of paper. No one comes any more, except the old man who gathers the tamarind pods to sell in the market.

Every night the jungle gets a little closer, and every day the ruins surrender a little more."

This is the greatest comment I have ever read. Never in the allotted time that remains to me will I write anything that matches it. Holy shit.
posted by Gin and Comics at 12:27 PM on August 12, 2013 [1 favorite]

I find Facebook to mostly be a hilarious time waster that all of my friends use where I can jokingly say things on their statuses and photos in the Internet persona that exists in my head and somehow comes out really well in text and only in text. Other than that, I use it to keep up with local shows. It's extremely handy and sends them to my iPhone's calendar. I've thrown house shows and gotten ludicrous turn outs just by making an FB event a couple of weeks ahead of time. It's a really easy way to create hype if you understand how to time it and are also aware of other events going on, which I guess go hand-in-hand.

I like Facebook for the most part. I don't sit on it while I am socializing with people because then it's distracting, but sometimes I want to be distracted from really banal situations, like waiting for the bus alone. I feel like people are still a bit insecure about social networking. There are times with Facebook or twitter come up in conversation and people can't help but mock themselves and their friends for using it despite the fact that they are using it. It seems weird to me. It's been over 5 years since I got one and I'm over it. I don't use twitter though, because my immediate group of friends don't, and the acquaintances that I know that use it are in their own little exclusive clique that I have no desire to be in contact with unless I am at a party with them. A very good friend of mine, on the other hand, whom I use to date, loves twitter. She always use to tell me that I was so good at the Internet, but I am terrible at twitter. Funny enough, I am better at Facebook than she is. For some reason my "Internet voice" comes through better on there.
posted by gucci mane at 12:28 PM on August 12, 2013

For some time I bombarded Kevin James' Twitter feed with my (almost certainly) priceless suggestion that the Richard Pryor classic Brewster's Millions was ripe for a James-esque hapless-guy-comes-good makeover, entitled (of course, allowing for inflation) Brewster's Billions. The last time I checked this was not in production.

You probably forgot to include a foul-mouthed CGI llama with a farting problem.
posted by Atom Eyes at 12:28 PM on August 12, 2013

One thing about Facebook is that girls, in particular, learn at a very early age to be extremely cagy about who they are and what they're doing. And that never really goes away; I have cow orkers in their thirties who have separate accounts for social life, or use fake names and details. Not just a few, either -- virtually ALL of my female cow orkers. And they all say the same thing: "I hate getting creeped on" ("by old men like you", they thoughtfully keep to themselves).

It's bad enough that in work settings they get creeped on unavoidably, the old-fashioned way, by phone and email, more or less constantly.

This might distort the statistics a little.
posted by Fnarf at 12:31 PM on August 12, 2013 [6 favorites]

I've always thought Twitter's motto should be "Hey! Notice me, famous person!".

For some people? Yes.

For the rest of us? It is a way of keeping in touch with people who want nothing to do with Facebook.
posted by Kitteh at 12:31 PM on August 12, 2013

You want to hang out with your friends somewhere COOL. Not a walled garden filled with parents.

Those two sentences say more than the whole article. Well summarized.
posted by mrgrimm at 12:32 PM on August 12, 2013 [4 favorites]

I can't allow myself to use Twitter, there is no possible good that can come from giving me a platform to directly communicate to celebrities that I want to touch them where their bathing suits cover.
posted by elizardbits at 12:34 PM on August 12, 2013 [10 favorites]

It is a way of keeping in touch with people who want nothing to do with Facebook.

Or for real-time stalking of a certain sports celebrity. #dempseywatch

That was actually a really fun night, watching the tweets come in about his progress from London to Seattle (or DID he?), and the 90% of responses from people calling us idiots and assholes for even imagining it could be true (it was).

Other than that, the only thing I have ever used twitter for is breaking news, like the Boston Marathon bombing, not so much to read what people were saying (almost entirely inane) but to look out for useful news links when most of the usual places (CNN, etc.) still had nothing.

Those news events are so rare that I have to reset my password every time; I go six months at a stretch without looking at it.
posted by Fnarf at 12:35 PM on August 12, 2013 [1 favorite]

one day the President of the United States is going to be some smartass whippersnapper who is younger than me.
posted by elizardbits at 11:49 AM

For me that was Obama. 2 months younger. It hurts.
posted by The Deej at 12:35 PM on August 12, 2013

I'm so out of it, I don't even know what an orker is, or why they particularly like cows. (I kid, I kid.)

I liked Facebook for a long while, but now find I only check into it maybe once every few months (quite literally). I think it was the discovery that lots of people I know casually and friended there hold quite vile (from my perspective) views on things. I don't need to know that stuff.
posted by maxwelton at 12:36 PM on August 12, 2013 [1 favorite]

I always find it interesting that we just invented the idea of the teenager in the last 50 years or so, post WW2, and now everyone feels bad that they're not one. And people feel badly that they're the same age as the President. Which means they've lived the life experience of someone who is President, not someone who knows which app the kids are using and is in Algebra II.

I mean it makes me sad, why can't we go back to celebrating life as the acquisition of knowledge. I was a pretty smart, accomplished teenager, but I was also a self absorbed idiot who thought I knew WAY more than I did.
posted by sweetkid at 12:39 PM on August 12, 2013 [27 favorites]

I'm so out of it, I don't even know what an orker is

That joke is at least twenty years old for me, going back to alt.folklore.urban, which is where I developed my chops typing things into the internet. I certainly didn't originate it, but I am constitutionally incapable of typing the word any other way now. Talk about out of it!
posted by Fnarf at 12:39 PM on August 12, 2013 [3 favorites]

Jokes about Facebook and baby photos are the new "and can you believe this airline food?" schtick. (and ya, I post photos of my kid on Facebook, like a rebel.)
posted by stltony at 12:42 PM on August 12, 2013 [1 favorite]

mothershock, that entire comment was horrifying, like Accelerando vomited all over real life.

sweetkid, let's be honest. Most things anyone says are not all that interesting, regardless of age.

Last but certainly not least, Fnarf, I don't know what cow orking is, but it sounds awesome.
posted by Steely-eyed Missile Man at 12:45 PM on August 12, 2013 [2 favorites]

Most things anyone says are not all that interesting, regardless of age

Agreed, but then "13 Year Old Says Facebook Sucks" is sweeping media.
posted by sweetkid at 12:52 PM on August 12, 2013 [2 favorites]

( ya I should swap Facebook and livejournal on that list. I youngest person I know with a quasi active LJ is 34 and an outlier.)
posted by The Whelk at 12:58 PM on August 12, 2013

I don't know what cow orking is

"Cow orking" is an unsupported backformation from the correct usage, "cow orker", which can be easily understood by removing the space, or moving it one character to the left.
posted by Fnarf at 12:58 PM on August 12, 2013 [1 favorite]

Official minimum age to even have a FB account is 13, right? I would expect kids that age (or younger by a year or two) to have already established themselves on other social networks, and hence have no need to drop everything and move to FB on their birthday.
posted by mrbill at 1:02 PM on August 12, 2013 [1 favorite]

Ruby Karp's mom used to be the co-editor in chief of Bust, back before it became "Marie Claire with crafts" (to quote Chunklet*).
posted by pxe2000 at 1:02 PM on August 12, 2013

mothershock, that entire comment was horrifying, like Accelerando vomited all over real life.

My work here is done!
posted by mothershock at 1:07 PM on August 12, 2013 [3 favorites]

At least 50% of my Facebook feed is baby pictures and conservative boomer family members. Not sure why I even use the site anymore.

This. If you want to hear old people hate on Obama, or see pictures of toddlers with their entire face covered with food, or hear about how potty training is going, facebook is awesome.

I'm in my 40s, and the majority of people on my facebook seem so old to me. I can only imagine how old they would look to a teenager.
posted by justgary at 1:13 PM on August 12, 2013 [1 favorite]

My high-school aged niece has me on her FB list but I almost never see any activity. I don't know whether that's because I'm on her family filter and see nothing or whether she has lots of personas and all the activity is on another.

I think I'd be horrified if she followed me on twitter or tumblr, though.
posted by immlass at 1:13 PM on August 12, 2013

Official minimum age to even have a FB account is 13, right? I would expect kids that age (or younger by a year or two) to have already established themselves on other social networks, and hence have no need to drop everything and move to FB on their birthday.

You have to be 13 to use almost any online social network: Tumblr TOS. Twitter removed the 13-year-old restriction in 2009, but the privacy policy still states: "Our Services are not directed to persons under 13."
posted by mrgrimm at 1:14 PM on August 12, 2013

I like to see baby photos keep em coming mom-friends
posted by Potomac Avenue at 1:15 PM on August 12, 2013 [1 favorite]

I use the private message part to talk to people. A lot. I don't have a lot of their email addresses
posted by sweetkid at 1:16 PM on August 12, 2013

Some people use memail for this they shall remain namelessrory
posted by Potomac Avenue at 1:16 PM on August 12, 2013 [1 favorite]

I check in with Facebook about once every 2-3 months, sigh at how boring my friends still are and then go on with my life. I'm 42.
posted by double block and bleed at 1:17 PM on August 12, 2013

I joined MeFi 9+ years ago. I was lurking for some time before that. The site hasn't changed much, and the changes have been incremental and mostly user-tweakable. I'd say that the ark of MeFi's use and usability is strong and nifty.

Up next: MeFi buys Facebook. We can't call it "the blue" even though their icon is blue. What do we call facebook.metafilter.com?
posted by andreaazure at 1:18 PM on August 12, 2013

Well, you know, after a few years, what is out becomes in again. This is why I think the telegraph is coming back.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 1:19 PM on August 12, 2013

The thought of having to feign interest in the lives of people with whom I went to middle school is wildly unappealing to me. Facebook, we will never be friends.
posted by elizardbits at 1:19 PM on August 12, 2013 [6 favorites]

Livejournal is for Olds. Awesome Olds but Olds nonetheless.

LiveJournal is essentially a real-ale pub, deserted except for a group of middle-aged Goths occupying one table.
posted by acb at 1:20 PM on August 12, 2013 [13 favorites]

> ( ya I should swap Facebook and livejournal on that list. I youngest person I know with a quasi active LJ is 34 and an outlier.)

Fandoms are alive and well on LJ, and for many of them participants definitely skew younger than 34.
posted by needled at 1:20 PM on August 12, 2013 [2 favorites]

The thought of having to feign interest in the lives of people with whom I went to middle school is wildly unappealing to me.

^THIS.^

I was tweeting last week about my complete disinterest in the lives of people I went to high school with and also my complete inability to pare the list as it were. The only people on FB I like to communicate with are people in my immediate area and my friends back home in Atlanta and all the Barbelith people. I just have very little interest in folks who knew me as a teen.
posted by Kitteh at 1:23 PM on August 12, 2013

now everyone feels bad that they're not [a teenager]

I don't actually find many people doing that. I think the reason people care what teens think about certain issues seemingly out of proportion is that a social networking platform (among other things) can succeed or fail largely based on how cool it's perceived to be, and there is no group more concerned with cool than teenagers. Not that nobody else cares, or that everyone wants to be 14 again (shudder), but you can get very strong readings from that group, so they're kind of an indicator species.

Similarly, linguists pay a lot of attention to what teenage girls say and how they say it, because many language trends start there. The theory is that they're more likely to mimic each other, so new tics and phrases and other things have a greater chance to take hold in a larger group than if they originate among, say, civil engineers ages 40-50.
posted by echo target at 1:24 PM on August 12, 2013

I'm 13 and none of my friends use Facebook.

I'm 39 and I couldn't give a fuck.
posted by MartinWisse at 1:29 PM on August 12, 2013 [13 favorites]

I'm growing old, and I occasionally wear my trousers rolled. And post things on FaceBook in spurts because my aunt is on there.
posted by Mister_A at 1:32 PM on August 12, 2013

After my daughter was born late last year, I rejoined Facebook after a long absence (attributable to simply not liking social networking sites in general). Back when I used to be on FB it was under a fake name to avoid my parents, and I very rarely logged in anyways. It was all full of friends in business for themselves, staying in touch with business contacts or students and such. Felt kinda awkward even with good friends, I was never sure what I could write that might get them in trouble with a client or a student or something.

The idea this time though was to stay in touch with my parents and stuff, who want all the baby pictures and things. But my wife is a FB power user on mat leave at the moment, so she puts up photos before I ever get a chance, and after maybe 2 weeks back at it, my Facebook account is languishing again. I maybe check it every 2 months if I think about it.

It's starting to sound like I may have effectively waited Facebook out, for the most part.
posted by Hoopo at 1:33 PM on August 12, 2013

My personal Facebook feed seems to consist of about one third forwarded news items (I've mostly hidden those "friends" who tend to forward obnoxious right-wing stuff), one third messages from people I know promoting some sort of event or gig, and one third pictures of pets, kids and food.

I don't know or interact with any teens online, except for a couple of younger relatives, and so can't speak to what they're doing these days.

But I do have a data point regarding Facebook vs. Twitter.

I recently was involved in promoting an event for an organization, in which part of my job was to send out info periodically on Facebook and Twitter. With both accounts having followings roughly similar in size and composition, the Tweets drew a lot more responses than the Facebook posts, and the Twitter feed picked up a lot of new followers while the Facebook page's number of "likes" only grew by a handful. I'm not drawing any firm conclusions just yet, but the difference was really noticeable.
posted by Nat "King" Cole Porter Wagoner at 1:35 PM on August 12, 2013

t actually find many people doing that. I think the reason people care what teens think about certain issues seemingly out of proportion is that a social networking platform (among other things) can succeed or fail largely based on how cool it's perceived to be, and there is no group more concerned with cool than teenagers. Not that nobody else cares, or that everyone wants to be 14 again (shudder), but you can get very strong readings from that group, so they're kind of an indicator species.

Yes, I know that teens are indicators of trends (for certain industries, not all) But teens were never huge on Facebook, so I don't see how this is the death knell for Facebook. They beat expectations with ad placements in the last quarter, for example. It does mean that as these teens age, they'll continue to not use Facebook, but then they'll be the old people using Vine for a while while the even -younger people are doing something else.

Also, I think even more than this our culture is set up for wish-I-was-a-teen/kid. There's all that stuff about "kids are innocent and have true wisdom which we lose as we age" which, barf, I knew plenty racist/selfish/idiot kids, and all those buzzfeed things about "18 year olds don't know what a cassette tape is for" which is supposed to make you gasp. I don't understand what other reason we're supposed to be upset about that unless we're supposed to have it in our heads that we were 18 just a minute ago, and being 18 just a minute ago is a really good thing.
posted by sweetkid at 1:35 PM on August 12, 2013 [3 favorites]

If you want to hear old people hate on Obama, or see pictures of toddlers with their entire face covered with food, or hear about how potty training is going, facebook is awesome.

I'm in my 40s. My facebook feed is made up of a few toddlers, many more cat (and a few dog) pix, and lots of local and not-so-local politics. Drug war? Covered. Sexism in the atheist movement? Covered. Links to the latest horrors against gay people in Russia? Covered. How the commercial fishing stocks are doing? Covered. Like that.

/sighs with relief
posted by rtha at 1:36 PM on August 12, 2013 [3 favorites]

Greg Nog: The above, written by a thirteen-year-old, is just about the sickest burn I have ever seen.

Cool story, Facebro.
posted by Rock Steady at 1:40 PM on August 12, 2013 [1 favorite]

Sic transit gloria Facebook.
posted by paulsc at 1:44 PM on August 12, 2013 [1 favorite]

I just went and checked. All of my friends and I have already had their babies. It's all dog pictures, which are even less interesting.
posted by double block and bleed at 1:44 PM on August 12, 2013 [1 favorite]

All of my friends and I have already had their babies. It's all dog pictures, which are even less interesting.

False.
posted by The Bellman at 1:46 PM on August 12, 2013 [13 favorites]

Sing Or Swim: I would have been deeply embarrassed to describe myself this way, even when I was thirteen.

Substitute "cool" for "trending", and no, you wouldn't.
posted by IAmBroom at 1:47 PM on August 12, 2013 [1 favorite]

You know, I actually refrained from posting baby pictures on my social network website of choice, because I felt like I had heard a lot of jokes about how annoying it is when people post baby pictures, and also because I kind of just didn't like the idea of my daughter's photos being all over the internet. I felt like it was a pretty good call.

And then all these people started giving me crap about how I never post any pictures of my baby and I should do that more. I don't know if mine is exceptionally cute or what.
posted by town of cats at 1:50 PM on August 12, 2013 [1 favorite]

People who complain about baby pictures are the same people who can't figure out how to hide updates from individuals on their Facebook feeds. They deserve only our deepest sympathy.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 1:56 PM on August 12, 2013 [3 favorites]

The Bellman: "All of my friends and I have already had their babies. It's all dog pictures, which are even less interesting.

False."

It would be false if any of my friends had cute dogs, but they don't. I have one friend who is on some sort of spay and neuter crusade, so those are all re-posted stock photos. Another friend has three butt-ugly pekingese who apparently never leave the couch.

It doesn't get any better from there. Like I said, once every 2-3 months and I'm good.
posted by double block and bleed at 1:58 PM on August 12, 2013 [1 favorite]

Facebook may contain everyone's parents, but it doesn't force everyone to be friends with their parents. And it absolutely doesn't prevent anyone from sticking their parents in a friend group that gets almost no updates.

I'm no great fan of Facebook, but "my parents are there and so I'm gonna get busted" isn't a good argument against it. And if you're gonna get busted because someone else puts pics of you on Facebook, you're gonna get busted whether you're on Facebook, yourself, or not. In fact, not being on it gives you less opportunity for damage control.
posted by gurple at 1:58 PM on August 12, 2013 [1 favorite]

It would be false if any of my friends had cute dogs, but they don't.

I'm sorry. Does this help? (Note: Not my dog. Not even, technically, a dog. But a dog can dream.)
posted by The Bellman at 2:06 PM on August 12, 2013 [1 favorite]

I was bummed to see that Facebook, which I pronounce in the Italian way*, finally overtook Orkut in Brazil last year. I love Brazil every so slightly less now.

*There is no reason at all for this clause to be in this sentence
posted by George_Spiggott at 2:08 PM on August 12, 2013 [3 favorites]

I disabled my FB account about six months ago* and haven't missed it at all.


*prompted by some ridiculous pro-DOMA bullshit from a neighbor
posted by Doleful Creature at 2:10 PM on August 12, 2013

Facebook doesn't force you to add your parents, no, but your parents might guilt you into it is the point. Also the "friend groups" thing either didn't exist for a long while or else was not common knowledge, because I and a lot of other people thought Google+'s circles were a pretty cool feature when it started up. It's not a knock against Facebook either because I know ultimately I could learn to do it that way, or insist to my parents I am not going to add them, but really it was all too much hassle and I wasn't interested. And this seems to be a "not just me" thing.
posted by Hoopo at 2:11 PM on August 12, 2013 [1 favorite]

where else are you going to go to find out that your relatives and neighbors are literally insane ?
posted by The Whelk at 2:14 PM on August 12, 2013 [7 favorites]

> I have a 14 year old, and twitter is huuuuuge. She has like seven different accounts for different fandoms

I find it an interesting contrast that a teen has found no difficulty setting up different Twitter accounts for different fandoms, while setting up different friend groups within Facebook continues being something that people apparently don't do or find difficult to do.

I'm wondering if having different handles for one's different fandoms or different identities makes it cognitively easier to keep track of them separately, rather than having friends groups within one's real-name account and trying to keep track of what should be shared with my work acquaintances versus my close family versus fellow fanfic authors, etc.
posted by needled at 2:17 PM on August 12, 2013 [1 favorite]

I don't mind the baby pics at all, it's the "NO GREATER JOB" caption that accompanies them.

Like...shut up.
posted by sweetkid at 2:18 PM on August 12, 2013 [13 favorites]

needled: See, I don't get that. I like discovering people I follow are bronies, like random fandoms I do, etc. My only regret is getting known in chem circles as Canageek by people I may want to work for someday. If I had to go back, I'd grab Chemdork or something and have two accounts instead of just one. One for play, and one for chem, because now I have to watch what I say on Canageek lot more closely as IRL people have discovered it.
posted by Canageek at 2:20 PM on August 12, 2013

I still have an active, though unused, Facebook account only because it seems cumbersome to relocate the tenuous connection to those acquaintances I have there. I assume that's by design.
posted by spacely_sprocket at 2:21 PM on August 12, 2013

NO GREATER JOB

Forklift operator is the greatest job!
posted by Mister_A at 2:25 PM on August 12, 2013 [1 favorite]

A little late to the party, but I really had to read a bunch of comments to make sure this wasn't a full blown adult trying to write like what they think a teenager might write like and they hadn't ever actually met a teenager.
posted by nevercalm at 2:35 PM on August 12, 2013 [4 favorites]

The layout also seemed incomprehensible compared to a few years back, but that might just be my unfamiliarity with it.

It is not just you.

"Good" and "bad" are not useful terms when discussing aspects of Facebook; "unusable" and "not yet unusable" and more valuable.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 2:36 PM on August 12, 2013

where else are you going to go to find out that your relatives and neighbors are literally insane ?

This, a thousand times this. My whole neighborhood is on Facebook - there are at least five super active groups that I belong to, ranging from the pet centered "Lost dog!" "Who's a good vet?" to the crime watch "There's a black kid on a bicycle riding by! I called the cops!" to the surreal "Everyone has to say FUCK in each post and we'll all meet for cocktails" and I think there may be more. A frightening amount of them, particularly the crime obsessed ones, a fair percentage of whom are actually racist batshit creeps, are completely, and I do mean completely, insane. I can't look away.
posted by mygothlaundry at 2:43 PM on August 12, 2013 [1 favorite]

I'd like to take this moment to thank my parents for having no interest in FB, as well as any other older family members.
posted by Kitteh at 2:46 PM on August 12, 2013

Most of my facebook feed is former journo colleagues, honestly — probably 90 percent is former coworkers.
posted by klangklangston at 2:47 PM on August 12, 2013

Wow, i'm 23 and this article and the comments here have made me feel old as fuck.

I mean, FFS, i used to post on gaming messageboards using a 33.6 modem. My first cellphone didn't have a color screen(and i was 13 when i got it, which is when most kids now seem to get iphones if not at the beginning of middle school).

What makes me feel the most old about this is my friends who grew up with myspace, and then facebook in middle/highschool are still using it as their primary means of communication. Yea, some of them are way in to tumblr... but facebook is still a huge thing.

So yea, old.
posted by emptythought at 2:47 PM on August 12, 2013 [1 favorite]

I mean, FFS, i used to post on gaming messageboards using a 33.6 modem.

HA HA HA

Seriously, get in line. You ain't that old.

My first cellphone... i was 13 when i got it

HA HA HA HA
posted by GuyZero at 2:51 PM on August 12, 2013 [36 favorites]

My whole neighborhood is on Facebook ... completely, and I do mean completely, insane. I can't look away.

My childhood-highschool neighborhood has one for this REALLY fat orange cat one guy owns. It's a MASSIVE page, like thousands of members. Tons of photos come in every day of the cat being out on the sidewalk, on peoples cars, in nearby coffee shops, in restaurants, in neighbors houses(he just goes wherever he wants and no one stops him).

People are OBSESSED with this cat. There's tshirts and stuff.

The guy who actually owns the cat has a pretty "heh...uh....ok guys" reaction to the whole thing and occasionally posts on the page. The rest of the people are like screaming 12 year old justin bieber fans.

There's pages like you listed, and probably more offensive pages for that area i'm sure. But that one is the most befuddling.

Oh, and on preview, to be clear i didn't mean that i'm actually old. I know i'm one of the younger people on here. But this shit seems to be accelerating exponentially and it's making me feel old. I'm sure there's entire new levels of that feeling i can't even imagine yet however.
posted by emptythought at 2:52 PM on August 12, 2013 [9 favorites]

Is there a web app that will let me drag and drop photos from Aperture or Lightroom and automatically re-scale and upload to Facebook, G+, Twitpic, Flickr and Picasa all at once

Lightroom does this out of the box, it rescales and has services for Facebook, Flickr and Picasa (which covers G+). Twitpic I'm not sure about.
posted by bonaldi at 2:53 PM on August 12, 2013

Meanwhile, in a bunker buried deep somewhere in Menlo Park, a team of Zuckerberg's best people are hard at work figuring out a way to monetize young people's indifference to their product.

In the future, Facebook would set up a generic account for every person on the planet. Then they'd force people to pay to get their account removed. East peasy. Imagine all the jobs that would created just to handle the removal requests. Think of all the staff they'd have to hire to travel to all corners of the world to set up accounts for people who don't even have electricity much less computers.
posted by fuse theorem at 2:56 PM on August 12, 2013 [1 favorite]

I'm 45 and childless. Not giving any shits about what 13-year-olds do is one of my privileges that I really enjoy.
posted by Squeak Attack at 3:11 PM on August 12, 2013 [19 favorites]

wtf do I care if a 13 y/o likes facebook? I use something because it suits my needs...PERIOD. when it doesn't...I move on. I DO NOT CARE. serious...why the f ck does anyone one over the age of twenty give a shit about this????
posted by shockingbluamp at 3:18 PM on August 12, 2013 [1 favorite]

Facebook was my MeFi before I found MeFi. My friends are historically really good at curating links, providing commentary, and raising their children and pets in hilarious and appropriately bewildered ways. No cat pic left behind.

So it may just be that I'm lucky, but I've never totally understood the vast and vitriolic hatred for Facebook,* or at least not when it comes from people who are known to enjoy really really similar platforms.

Then again I am smack-dab in the peak of that bell curve that is shifting one year to the right, every year, as Kadin2048 mentioned. And my family are on facebook, but they share my politics as well as my love of strong drink.

Actually that may be the whole of it right there.




*Myspace, sure, that was like a seizure machine populated entirely by embedded audio gremlins and bewbs. Does nobody remember what a RELIEF the Facebook interface was** once Myspace taught us that 99% of people have zero concept of good design?

**One billion years ago, when the earth was young and I rode a dinosaur to college and nobody had a fucking cell phone because seriously, what are you people, bazillionaires?
posted by like_a_friend at 3:23 PM on August 12, 2013 [1 favorite]

I DO NOT CARE. serious...why the f ck does anyone one over the age of twenty give a shit about this????

You're getting awful angry over not caring what a 13 year old thinks. Just saying!
posted by naju at 3:24 PM on August 12, 2013 [3 favorites]

Metafilter: You're getting awful angry over not caring

I mean really that's 70% of the comments on this site.
posted by sweetkid at 3:25 PM on August 12, 2013 [14 favorites]

Facebook does not want to be cool, any more than Verizon or Comcast or (heck) UPS wants to be cool. It wants to be a utility.

"Cool" is something you can never keep permanently online, and cool is something an online business aspires to for the purpose of being bought by Facebook, Google, etc.

Facebook simply needs to own doing what Facebook does, and it totally owns that. 13 year old girls don't (for the moment) need to do what Facebook does, and that's fine. Few 13 year old girls have accounts with the electricity company or mortgages either, and ConEd and Wells Fargo are completely okay with that.
posted by MattD at 3:39 PM on August 12, 2013 [10 favorites]

A) I thought facebook had a minimum age, one that was over 13.

B) I miss livejournal. My friends dragged me kicking and screaming to facebook (using never seen before pics of my teenage mohawk). And now I stay in contact with classmates, family, and the club scene. But I liked livejournal so much more.

C) I'm a little lost... Where are the 40+ year olds supposed to go now?
posted by _paegan_ at 3:39 PM on August 12, 2013 [1 favorite]

Oh my god this is good but I just can't help chuckling at her repeated references to "a facebook." I think she and her grandmother have more common ground than she imagines.

and

Wait, I thought you "were on Facebook," not "had [a?] Facebook"? Am I so out of it I don't even have the right verb?

This drove me craaaaaaazy for months and months, it should be "a Facebook account" not "a Facebook." But no, this is common usage (do you have a facebook, it was posted on her facebook, etc.).

(I'm 43 and have a FB account which I never use, but I do have two FBing teenagers.)
posted by torticat at 3:44 PM on August 12, 2013 [2 favorites]

I have to agree with sentiments already expressed: Tumblr doesn't skew younger so much as it skews 'people who really don't have enough pictures of Tom Hiddleston in their lives'. Facebook skews 'people who want to rant about politics to people who already agree with them' and 'people who have or would like to see pictures of babies'. Google Plus skews 'devoted geeks', which probably means it's not long for the world, given how Google treats any product with that particular niche.

Teenagers don't have a real need for the sorts of things Facebook is best for--and they didn't when it first opened, either. The younger set on Facebook was always college kids, not young teenagers. They'll shift what they're using as they get older. Facebook's death knell will come when the venting goes elsewhere.
posted by Sequence at 3:45 PM on August 12, 2013 [1 favorite]

Can someone explain to me what the deal with Snapchat is? The only potential use for it I can think of is sending sexy pictures to someone you don't entirely trust not to share them. Otherwise, why not just take a picture and text it? I have been feeling so old and confused every since I first heard about this like a month ago.
posted by naoko at 3:47 PM on August 12, 2013

why the f ck does anyone one over the age of twenty give a shit about this????

I think because they are looking at it as a potential indicator of Facebook's fate, not because they all are really into opinions from 13 year olds
posted by Hoopo at 4:00 PM on August 12, 2013

I'm 13 and none of my friends use Facebook.

I'm 39 and I couldn't give a fuck.

I'm 46 and my hotmail account tells me there are pills that cure this. I have no idea how you spell the name of it though.
posted by srboisvert at 4:02 PM on August 12, 2013 [6 favorites]

gottabefunky: "Wait, I thought you "were on Facebook," not "had [a?] Facebook"? Am I so out of it I don't even have the right verb"

No, no, you facebooked the shit out of it
posted by Red Loop at 4:10 PM on August 12, 2013 [2 favorites]

yea I just read something somewhere that said you're old if you say "facebook" and not "a facebook" idk
posted by sweetkid at 4:12 PM on August 12, 2013

emptythought you better post that goldarn fat cat facebook page asap or someones gonna ban the bejeesers outta you (cortex).
posted by Potomac Avenue at 4:13 PM on August 12, 2013 [1 favorite]

why the f ck does anyone one over the age of twenty give a shit about this????

How come "fuck" gets neutered and "shit" doesn't? That's what I want to know. After all what's fuck without u?
posted by The Bellman at 4:18 PM on August 12, 2013

I did not know that the "u" was the testicles part of the word "fuck"

whoa mind blown
posted by sweetkid at 4:21 PM on August 12, 2013 [4 favorites]

"Google Plus skews 'devoted geeks', which probably means it's not long for the world, given how Google treats any product with that particular niche."

I know — every so often I think about hey, G+, I have friends there and it's super easy to share photos there with my phone, maybe I should go back.

Then I remember Reader and think, "Fuck if I'm investing any time in learning to use G+."
posted by klangklangston at 4:28 PM on August 12, 2013 [5 favorites]

Facebook doesn't force you to add your parents, no, but your parents might guilt you into it is the point.

I am extremely unhappy and borderline ashamed that I now have 2 Facebook profiles. One is my real profile and the other is a fake that I use for family. I got tired of being castigated for posting about politics and religious hypocrisy.

I guess I should have just filtered my posts, but its so cumbersome. Plus, the fake profile can be found by employers and the like to show I have something of a digital footprint.
posted by reenum at 4:32 PM on August 12, 2013 [2 favorites]

I knew I was pretty well done with posting to facebook actively when the three people who usually commented on my posts were my 61-year old dad and his 70-something brothers. I'll post family photos, but I don't want them following my day-to-day life.

Livejournal seems to be mostly 40-something fan fiction writers.

I'm in my thirties; a few friends are still on facebook but most are more active on twitter.

And I'm too old to figure out that tumblr thing, though Club Penguin sounds like fun.
posted by jb at 4:32 PM on August 12, 2013

Potomac Ave: ok.

It must have been recreated, i swear it had something like 16-1800 members when i last looked at it a few months ago. It's also not as funny as it used to be. This thread just made me think of it, but i hadn't actually looked at it in a while.

Anticlimactic a bit...
posted by emptythought at 4:34 PM on August 12, 2013

I am extremely unhappy and borderline ashamed that I now have 2 Facebook profiles. One is my real profile and the other is a fake that I use for family. I got tired of being castigated for posting about politics and religious hypocrisy.

I just have various friend lists for filtering posts (it's a mechanism which works much like LiveJournal filters). Among their uses is not to get into flamewars with right-wing older relatives about whether or not Australia's on the verge of being destroyed by the Communists.
posted by acb at 4:37 PM on August 12, 2013

If you google "Facebook is..." check out what Google suggests...

If you Google "Google Plus is..." you get the same thing: "dead/down/stupid/confusing/a joke..."
posted by John Cohen at 4:38 PM on August 12, 2013

I disabled my FB account about six months ago* and haven't missed it at all.

*prompted by some ridiculous pro-DOMA bullshit from a neighbor

Why not just unfriend or block that one person?
posted by John Cohen at 4:40 PM on August 12, 2013

Why not just unfriend or block that one person?

Clearly you do not understand the RAGEQUIT.
posted by GuyZero at 4:43 PM on August 12, 2013 [6 favorites]

YES FACEBOOK SHRIVEL UP AND DIE! DOWN THE COMMODE OF HISTORY WITH YOU.
posted by JHarris at 4:46 PM on August 12, 2013 [1 favorite]

(Seriously, there's lots about Facebook to hate, not the least of which how they pushed Google towards Plus, and the ultimate shuttering of Reader. BAH.)
posted by JHarris at 4:47 PM on August 12, 2013

which I pronounce in the Italian way

I DO THIS TOO AND NO ONE EVER THINKS IT IS FUNNY OR CLEVER

THEY ARE WRONG AND STUPID

WE ARE AWESOME
posted by elizardbits at 5:07 PM on August 12, 2013 [3 favorites]

I just logged into Orkut, probably for the second time ever, to see how that's looking these days. It seems to be trying to gently steer me to G+. Not a lot of activity (at least in English) after about 2009.

It'd be hilarious if you could start a thing for piling into Orkut and suddenly just using the shit out of it. Might be hard to convince people to get invested what with the Reader debacle, though, but maybe as a pranky activity. If unicorning can take off, what can't?
posted by George_Spiggott at 5:10 PM on August 12, 2013

G+ is for interactive narrative adventures and photos of my hair.

I like to call it Her Majesty's Booke Of Facies myself.
posted by The Whelk at 5:12 PM on August 12, 2013

As Bigend said: "Listen to your enemies. For God is speaking."
posted by Twang at 5:20 PM on August 12, 2013

> C) I'm a little lost... Where are the 40+ year olds supposed to go now?

Metafilter
posted by jfuller at 5:45 PM on August 12, 2013 [4 favorites]

Nibs' page is a lot of fun, emptythought. Thanks for sharing.
posted by not that girl at 5:51 PM on August 12, 2013

jquinby I think of G+ more like an abandoned time share, built in a free-enterprise zone on some forgotten coast. There are lizards on the wall and the courtyard is full of dead leaves and scraps of paper. No one comes any more, except the old man who gathers the tamarind pods to sell in the market.

Every night the jungle gets a little closer, and every day the ruins surrender a little more.

Canageek The big exception to this is the Tabletop Gaming community, which has embraced it whole-heartedly. Hangouts are great for gaming, and it is a really good way to share links to blogs and things, and coordinate gaming times and such.

Also a big exception are the scientific communities. They're active enough and interesting enough that I have a bit of trouble keeping up with my main G+ feed. Also, as a scientist, G+ is rapidly becoming an integral part of my work. With so many of the scientists in my field already on there, I really appreciate G+ for hangouts for conference calls, common-interest based networking to meet new people in my field, threaded conversations for managing collaborations, and just general reliable rapid communication to select groups of people who each have 8 email addresses and 6 layers of spam filters. I don't see G+ as a way to keep up with baby pictures and family political agendas. It's a tool for my job.
posted by yeolcoatl at 5:55 PM on August 12, 2013 [1 favorite]

I hope the 13-year-olds aren't using Tumblr either, because I don't want to read any more fanfiction with crap sex scenes.
posted by Squeak Attack at 5:56 PM on August 12, 2013

Items like this always make me feel so.... old. I was explaining to one of my younger co-workers (she's 25, I'm 51) why I didn't have an iphone and don't feel any pressing need to get one. She asked me how I keep in touch with friends and family. I told her we just email each other, or call each other on the phone.... and that's.... it!!!

The look on her face was priceless.
posted by freakazoid at 5:59 PM on August 12, 2013 [3 favorites]

yeolcoatl: Cool, I'll have to check for good organometallics groups.
posted by Canageek at 6:24 PM on August 12, 2013

I'm a little lost... Where are the 40+ year olds supposed to go now?

The porch?
posted by The Underpants Monster at 6:27 PM on August 12, 2013 [1 favorite]

> alt.folklore.urban, which is where I developed my chops typing things into the internet

Me too: AFU and alt.usage.english. I don't suppose you ever went to a boink in NYC?
posted by The corpse in the library at 6:47 PM on August 12, 2013 [1 favorite]

I don't see G+ as a way to keep up with baby pictures and family political agendas. It's a tool for my job.

Which is why it will hurt when Google finally decides it doesn't need it to chase Facebook anymore and kills it dead.
posted by JHarris at 7:03 PM on August 12, 2013 [2 favorites]

I've noticed that most of my Facebook feed is a tiny fraction of my friends. Out of 200 people, probably only twenty or so post anything regularly.


I'd use twitter more but I don't know many IRL people on there, mostly just famous people or metafilter people. It's great for catching up with William Gibson or John Barlow but not for hanging out with friends.
posted by octothorpe at 8:03 PM on August 12, 2013

For years, facebook has overestimated how COOL it is and how USEFUL it is.

Regardless of how cool they are or aren't, Reddit, Twitter, LiveJournal, Yelp, Flickr, Tumblr, Grindr, OK Cupid, Deviant Art, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc. etc. etc. all have one or two functions and they're all pretty good at it.

The only thing facebook is good at is BEING FACEBOOK. It's still pretty great at connecting and reconnecting old friends, classmates, and far flung family members but it's only good at that if people are using facebook at least passively.

A couple years ago I would have said facebook was doing a good-not-great version of being "a little bit of every part of the internet" but they took away a lot of that ability to cherrypick your own facebook experience by doing everything they can to make sure you see that post from Oreo cookies.

As for COOL, I don't think it's ever been. It was convenient and functional. I don't think a social network can be cool. It can only be tainted and ghettoized as being UNCOOL, PRETENTIOUS, or BORING, and the like.
posted by elr at 8:37 PM on August 12, 2013 [3 favorites]

I don't know. Facebook seemed pretty cool on campus in 2004, but that was before status updates and wall posts. What I don't get is how Twitter can be cool; it's so damn public, and the content gets mirrored and indexed all over the place so you're not really in control. It's only useful for posting things related to my professional interests.
posted by stopgap at 8:52 PM on August 12, 2013

I'd use twitter more but I don't know many IRL people on there, mostly just famous people or metafilter people. It's great for catching up with William Gibson or John Barlow but not for hanging out with friends.

I think that depends on how many friends you have on Twitter. Enough of my friends are regular Twitter users that we tend to count who is not on Twitter, so that we don't miss them when setting up events via Twitter. I will even have chat-like conversations via Twitter. I see photos from friends' vacations, share jokes, give coffee shop suggestions, gossip about city politics, or (more sadly) retweet news about homophobia in Russia.

As for privacy: you can set your account to be private, and then only approved followers can see your tweets. I know someone who did this for an account which he used as to update a group about the progress of a certain project. Personally, I've chosen the split-personality approach someone above uses for Facebook: I have a real name Twitter for professional tweets, and another (more active) account for my personal connections and interests.
posted by jb at 9:05 PM on August 12, 2013

I'm a college kid now, and the only time I ever really loved Facebook was when I was in high school. Everyone in my 80-person grade was addicted to it, and thought it was cool. It was back when membership was limited to students and people with invitations. People had customizable walls and stuff, and it was how everyone exchanged notes and talked and did Tumblr-esque, Metafilter-esque, or even Livejournal-esque things. Or did surveys and games that we thought were cool because we were dumb fourteen-year-olds with nothing better to do with our time.

Now my newsfeed is all status updates from the same ten people saying LOOK AT ME, LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME STUDYING ABROAD AND TRAVELING! LOOK AT THE MACARONS I BAKED! LOOK AT ME IN MY BATHING SUIT!

It's just not worth visiting anymore. I text or email the people I care about. They're not the people showing up in my news feed.
posted by topoisomerase at 9:06 PM on August 12, 2013 [3 favorites]

I just realized: in the last six months or so, Twitter has replaced Metafilter as my primary source of news. It started off just as a way to connect with friends, but now that I'm following several news feeds and bloggers/columnists who link to news stories, I'm getting a rich mix of local and international news. It's best for local and niche news; I follow my city councillor to hear about stuff happening in our ward. (He must be on vacation this week, as he didn't mention one very interesting event that I'm sure he would have if he'd been tweeting).

I also recently was in a photo tweeted by a special project I am volunteering for (which I learned about from twitter), and just found out via a tweet about a job opportunity at a place I'd love to work for.

I think I would have information overload - as I do when I look at facebook - but the clean interface and required brevity seem to really work for me.
posted by jb at 9:13 PM on August 12, 2013

Stop saying "a facebook"! That's not a thing! Anyways... back before facebook (which I'm always surprised I only obtained during my final year at university), in school, I would contact friends via ICQ, then MSN, and occasionally email. Once facebook got round I begun to organise social events using facebook. Which is ironic really, considering they've recently made the messaging system much, much worse than it used to be. I do think FB thrives on fufilling lots of different roles for different users. For my parents, its primarily a place to play scrabble on, for my wife, to look at people's photos for apparently all of time. For me, communication, and occasional cyberstalking of people from school.
posted by Cannon Fodder at 11:58 PM on August 12, 2013

which I pronounce in the Italian way

I DO THIS TOO AND NO ONE EVER THINKS IT IS FUNNY OR CLEVER

THEY ARE WRONG AND STUPID

WE ARE AWESOME

Moi je le prononce à la française : face de bouc.

Ce qui veut dire en anglais, "goat-face".
posted by MarionnetteFilleDeChaussette at 3:00 AM on August 13, 2013 [2 favorites]

I call it "the book of faces" because I heard Zuckerberg gets 0.01 cents every time it is spoken aloud or written
posted by Renoroc at 5:25 AM on August 13, 2013 [1 favorite]

It's still pretty great at connecting and reconnecting old friends, classmates, and far flung family members but it's only good at that if people are using facebook at least passively.

This. I'm 37. I've lived in five U.S. states and have dozens of international connections abroad. Between shuffling around most of my adult life and the general diaspora of friends and relatives, Facebook keeps me connected to folks with whom, through the ordinary course of living, I would have otherwise lost touch, and it's helped me rekindle past friendships I long thought lost.

Maybe the utility of Facebook is that it's perfect for nostalgists.
posted by echocollate at 6:00 AM on August 13, 2013 [9 favorites]

If I didn't block things I don't want to see on Facebook, an overwhelming percentage of my Facebook feed would be Candy Crush and Texas Holdem updates from my elderly relatives. I'm not surprised that "the kids" are migrating to other venues.

I have a love/hate relationship with it myself. It's mostly hate, but it's how people I love choose to send the world updates of their comings and goings so if I completely check-out I would be missing so much.
posted by Kimberly at 6:48 AM on August 13, 2013 [1 favorite]

I blocked all Facebook games years ago, it would be unreadable otherwise.
posted by octothorpe at 6:50 AM on August 13, 2013 [2 favorites]

Regarding whether facebook was ever cool: It was, once, but you've got to remember that it was cool because it was a classy alternative to MySpace. Friendster had already pretty much died, and MySpace was the realm of gaudy, trashy gifs and throbbing text. That you had to have an .edu email made it exclusive and its blandness was classy for the time.
posted by klangklangston at 8:06 AM on August 13, 2013

MySpace was actually a pretty valuable tool for me to learn about html and css, and more importantly, what one should never use them to do.
posted by elizardbits at 9:00 AM on August 13, 2013 [4 favorites]

@klangklangston respectfully, I gotta disagree. It was cool (er) than MySpace, which was on the way out, but I think it was only cool by comparison, and much less so when looked at on its own merits.

I think facebook is shooting itself in the foot by trying to be a cool thing for everybody. That doesn't exist. It can be the cool thing for high schoolers and college students because there will always be new teenagers and twentysomethings. It can be the cool thing for professionals amd post-collegiate adults because new people join that demographic every day and stay there a long time.

But I don't think it can be a place where everyone defines themselves as they move through every stage of life, growing alongside the advertisers collecting their metadata.
posted by elr at 11:12 AM on August 13, 2013

What is actually next after Facebook? All of the so-called alternatives are existing simultaneously with Facebook and they all are capable of working along each other. You can post on twitter then share that to your Facebook, or post a photo on Instagram and share it on Twitter, FB, and tumblr, all at the same time. I feel like Facebook, less so than Myspace, is the only service that lets you have a fleshed out internet identity. You have your albums of photos that show a timeline of your progression as a human being (photos of you wearing embarrassingly baggy jeans, photos of you with friends you no longer see either because you moved or they moved or they got married/had kids or you just don't hang out with them for whatever reason), you have your actual timeline that shows your life for the past few years (people you use to know, relationships beginning and ending, etc.), there is some semblance of an actual profile but that's sort of been pushed to the background for the past few years, you have your 'likes' and pages you can share, and much more. I don't use twitter so perhaps someone more informed can expand upon this, but it's there for quick little messages and the sharing of photos from your phone while you're out and about. It's for quick interactions. When you're on the bus and something crazy happens you can tweet about it quickly and easily (on my iPhone I just pull down the notification bar and I can tweet right there) and then also share that to Facebook in one click. Twitter doesn't have much of a profile like Facebook does.

Tumblr is the worst I feel like. Tumblr is like faux-social networking. I use to be enamored with tumblr, I couldn't stop using it. I mostly used it to post my photography, but I had such a large amount of followers, and also people I was following, that the whole reblogging thing just took over for me. I figured out what my followers mostly liked, reblogged those things, and proceeded to rake in hits. Then, when I posted my photos, it meant more people saw them. However, this was no good. People would look at my photos, people that have no idea what my personality is like outside of few text-based posts or responses to others that I made, and come up with an idea of what I was like as a human being based on the content of my photos. I'd post photos of my friends skateboarding, me at house shows, photos of people drinking. There were so many people that saw these photos and thought "Man, that guy lives the coolest life." and I know that because people would send me messages in my ask box telling me that. You could go on tumblr and cultivate a whole different persona than what you actually are like. Of course, you can do this on Facebook, and I know there are people who have done that, but I think people are a little more hesitant to believe or even add a stranger on Facebook since it's setup for your more immediate friend group (e.g. people you know in real life or have at least met in real life).

I feel like Facebook is a good medium between Myspace and something like tumblr or twitter. Myspace allowed you to set up your page however you wanted. You could inflect your personality in the design of your profile. Facebook doesn't let you do that, but tumblr does to a point.
posted by gucci mane at 2:25 PM on August 13, 2013 [2 favorites]

A recent academic study of photo sharing on Facebook finds that sharing a lot of photographs may not be a good thing. According to one of the study authors, "Our research found that those who frequently post photographs on Facebook risk damaging real-life relationships. This is because people, other than very close friends and relatives, don’t seem to relate well to those who constantly share photos of themselves."
posted by needled at 7:44 AM on August 14, 2013

Or, "A recent academic study of photo sharing on Facebook finds that sharing a lot of photographs be something some people do, which they then extrapolated from loose data into claims about individual reactions that they pulled out of their asses."

FTFA's Abstract, emphasis added:

...the present work identifies the potential consequences to personal relationships when sharing day-to-day information. Results found from a sample of 508 Facebook users suggests ...

Seriously... why are these wordshitters employed as academicians?
posted by IAmBroom at 10:17 AM on August 14, 2013

emptythought: "People are OBSESSED with this cat. There's tshirts and stuff.

The guy who actually owns the cat has a pretty "heh...uh....ok guys" reaction to the whole thing and occasionally posts on the page. The rest of the people are like screaming 12 year old justin bieber fans.

There's pages like you listed, and probably more offensive pages for that area i'm sure. But that one is the most befuddling."

Clearly, the cat is in charge here and engineered the whole scenario.
posted by krinklyfig at 1:56 AM on August 15, 2013

Pew: Teens Haven't Abandoned Facebook (Yet)
posted by box at 11:23 AM on August 15, 2013

What is actually next after Facebook? All of the so-called alternatives are existing simultaneously with Facebook and they all are capable of working along each other.

Huh? Vine is not integrated with Facebook, Google+ is not integrated with Facebook ...
posted by mrgrimm at 1:21 PM on August 15, 2013