LA Times: Some Teens Aren’t Liking Facebook as Much As Older Users

From the Los Angeles Times:

With more than 900 million users, Facebook remains the most popular online hangout. But some young people are turning their attention elsewhere. They are checking out new mobile apps, hanging out on Tumblr and Twitter, and sending plain-old text messages from their phones. Their goal is to hook up with smaller circles of friends and share their thoughts and feelings away from the prying eyes of Mom and Dad.
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“Just because teens are using other services like Twitter and Tumblr more — and they are using these services in huge amounts — doesn’t mean they’re using Facebook less,” said Alice Marwick, a postdoctoral researcher at Microsoft Research, where she studies how teens interact with technology.
In fact, 8 of 10 teens who are online use social networking sites — and more than 93% of those users have a Facebook account, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project. Millions more kids under the legal Facebook age of 13 fib about their age to use the service.
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On Twitter or Tumblr, they say, they can also be more selective about what they share and with whom, and feel less social pressure to “friend” everyone in their school or friends of friends.
Twitter, they say, just feels more private and intimate. They can use pseudonyms or private locked accounts so their tweets stay between friends. Twitter also enables teens to have fun as a group, jumping on trending topics such as the #IgoToASchoolWhere hashtag.

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