Technology, Inequality, and Society

In this post I continue with a quick reading of the “ Teens, social media and technology 2022 ” survey findings. Previously I looked at Twitter, technology that teens never fell in love. In this post I am curious why so many teens broke their relationship with Facebook. In 2014-15 Facebook dominated Snapchat and Instagram. 71% of teens in the survey said they ‘ever use’ Facebook back then. The term ‘ever use’ can be misread so I clarify it a bit. They use this term to distinguish from ‘constant use’. It suffices to read ‘ever use’ as ‘once in a while’. In 2022 this number has plummeted to 32%. Only 2% of them associate themselves with ‘constant use’. Considering the scale, this is a dramatic drop. Why did this happen? It is easy to fall into the trap of weaving a story after the fact. There are many such contenders.  First a classic, “teens left when adults (and parents) flocked to it in huge numbers”.  Second, “teens never were into it actually despite what the big number sug...