Facebook: Not Just for the Old, Younger People Like it Too

For some time it has been axiomatic to believe that Facebook is for old people—that youth have fled that social media platform for cooler ways of interacting.

It’s apparently not true.

Research by social media strategist Vincenzo Cosenza, as reported by Digiday, found that Facebook reaches the most 18- to 29-year-old U.S. users, with 86% of people in that age group using it.

That is followed by 71% who use YouTube, and 58% who use Instagram.

Twitter is next in line with 47% of that age group, and Snapchat follows with 45%.

For those who are in the 30-59 age group, 81% use Facebook, 52% use YouTube, 39% use Twitter and 31% use Instagram.

What about people 60-plus? 67% use Facebook, 25% YouTube, 16% Twitter, 7% Instagram.

(In Canada, 75% of 18-29 year-olds use Facebook, according to Abacus Data. for the 60-plus demographic, 49% check it daily.)

While use of the various platforms varies by demographic, one thing is the same across all ages: Facebook is dominant.

Facebook is the leader in 119 of 149 countries analyzed by Cosenza on his World Map of Social Networks. This includes Canada and the U.S.

What’s in second place in those two countries? In Canada, it’s Reddit. In the U.S., it’s Twitter.

In other words, it’s true what I wrote about before: Facebook is eating the world. 

And that includes younger people, too.

(On the other hand, an e-marketing company, called EMarketer, predicts the number of young people on Facebook will fall this year by 3.4%. They will migrate to Snapchat and Instagram. I guess we'll see in late December if that is true.)