"Facebook is for old people."

I learned this last week from my fourteen-year-old sister that the majority of teenagers in middle school and high school believe that "Facebook is for old people." Having only left my teen years a few short months ago, I was shocked, as well as terrified. I would never consider Facebook a hobby of mine, but I am a fairly updated user. I will post for life events and add pictures of trips. However, just a short time ago I was too young for my Facebook account, and now I am being written off as outdated.

The hard truth for people like Peter Pan and myself is that more than eleven million high school and college aged users abandoned Facebook between 2011 and 2014. Middle schoolers and many high schoolers never felt the need to create an account in the first place. My fourteen-year-old insider tells me that her classmates use social media all the time; they are glued to their phones in the cafeteria. However, they are all using more recent platforms such as Twitter and Instagram. Although social media is expanding and becoming more popular among the youth, their interest in Facebook has dramatically declined. TIME magazine published an article by Christopher Matthews in 2014 which included the following statistics.

Now the question remains: Is Facebook doomed due to its decline in young users? Many would say yes. It is believed that people between the ages of 13 and 25 have defined popular culture in the United States and what is considered outdated. This is not entirely false; anyone can see this through basic usage of the media. Main characters in television and films are typically within that age range, and popular music often reflects life as a young person. However, according to these statistics, Facebook's popularity is greatly inclining amongst users above their thirties, and especially users above their fifties. Facebook is by no means doomed. From a marketing standpoint, ads and links on Facebook have been and should be shifted toward the generation whose populating the platform.