I'm 13 and None of My Friends Use Facebook

http://mashable.com/2013/08/11/teens-facebook/

by danhodgins • 13 years ago

95 87 13 years ago

minimaxir• 13 years ago

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.

There's a lot of unintentional irony in that statement.

EliRivers2• 13 years ago

I like this bit best:

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

Utterly dismissive. Facebook is some kind of niche website for grandparents.

cko• 13 years ago

I'm sorry, but at the risk of boring all the HN readers who "got it", I must ask for an explanation of what "unintentional irony" you saw.

Were her verb tenses all mixed up? English is my primary language and I can't even really tell.

infinite_snoop• 13 years ago

Maybe the fact that Instagram was aquired by FB?

Aardwolf• 13 years ago

I’m a teen living in New York. All of my friends have social networks — Instagram <snip>

Isn't Instagram part of Facebook?

asperous• 13 years ago

I think it's owned by, and integrated with partially. I'm pretty sure Facebook saw this coming (kids parents having Facebook, so kids no longer thinking it was cool), and that's why they jumped on the sale of insta.

rickyc091• 13 years ago

Yep, and most kids don't realize that Instagram is owned by Facebook. It seems these days Instagram and Kik are the big things. (I teach middle school children).

dictum• 13 years ago

Good.

EDIT: My overly clever pithiness that doesn't add to the discussion stems from having seen too many similar posts for every social network or mobile app since the early 2000s. Any service that relies heavily on everyone buying in will eventually lose steam, in part for cultural reasons[1] and also because other companies find areas where they can improve and desires that hadn't been tapped yet.

So, for a big social network to survive for decades and become an entrenched part of everyone's lives, it has to become like infrastructure. I suppose one way to do that is to continually buy new hot companies, as Facebook did to Instagram. Instagram too shall pass.

But when I read the headline, I did wish her friends were just finding new interests, and the new interests were taking too much time and leaving none to spend on FB.

[1] Imagine that Seinfeld was still being produced to this day.

EliRivers2• 13 years ago

Imagine that Seinfeld was still being produced to this day.

Or the Simpsons! That would have stopped being funny in the nineties and now it'd be wheeled out each week just begging to be put of its misery.

gavingmiller• 13 years ago

Or maybe you're no longer part of the culture that the Simpsons is relevant to...

dools• 13 years ago

As a side note check out @SeinfeldToday

coldtea2• 13 years ago

Imagine that Seinfeld was still being produced to this day.

I don't get the obsession with Seinfeld. It wasn't funny even in it's day.

thristian• 13 years ago

Although I was rather fond of Seinfeld when it first aired, I can understand why it's particular sense of humour wasn't for everyone.

These days, of course, there's also http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SeinfeldIsUnfunny to contend with.

RobAtticus• 13 years ago

You can always be sure that when Seinfeld is mentioned, somebody will be there to let everyone know they didn't like it.

Well, really any super-popular-thing/group/person. See: The Beatles, Seinfeld, etc

ctdonath• 13 years ago

I've been on Internet based social networks since about 1990 when one could actually keep up with EVERY post on usenet. Fact is, every identifiable social network has a distinct lifespan and will evaporate - Facebook being no exception, and now would be a good time to sell FB stocks if you have them.

singingfish• 13 years ago

I agree. I have a 13 year old and she has a facebook account which she doesn't use.

threeseed4• 13 years ago

And yet I know a 13 year old that does.

So by our combined data set I believe we can safely extrapolate that 50% of all 13-year olds across the world use Facebook.

MrBra• 13 years ago

:) smartcasm

denzil_correa• 13 years ago

I read this particular part with great interest

    Facebook is also a big source of bullying in middle 
    school. Kids might comment something mean on a photo of 
    you, or message you mean things. This isn’t Facebook's 
    fault, but again, it does happen there. If my mom heard I 
    was getting bullied on Facebook, she would tell me to 
    quit right away.

The power wars have caught on Facebook too.

evincarofautumn2• 13 years ago

What’s silly is the parent’s (hypothetical) reaction. It’s as if they would take a kid out of school for being bullied in class, instead of trying to solve the actual problem.

clubhi• 13 years ago

I'm 30 and have plenty of 13 year old friends on facebook.

alexcroox• 13 years ago

ಠ_ಠ

insteadof• 13 years ago

Do they know you're 30?

gamegoblin• 13 years ago

I assume nieces/nephews/younger cousins?

to3m• 13 years ago

My brother is a secondary school teacher, and at one point would fairly often get friend requests from his pupils.

I thought this a little odd. So did he. But in the end he figured out which box to tick so that they could be his friend, without actually letting them see anything, and this seemed to keep everybody happy.

(The subject hasn't come up recently so I don't know whether this is still the case, or whether his pupils have moved on to some other system, probably one that I've never heard of.)

mhurron2• 13 years ago

Perhaps you should have a seat over there.

logn2• 13 years ago

I'm 30. All my friends use facebook and it's been very hard for me to leave. I have left though and literally have lost contact with people merely because they always forget to invite me to things, and we've gone our separate ways. When I joined The Facebook, it was just a fun place for college kids. When I left it was a mega evil empire where you could lose your job, be put in prison, get lectures from concerned parents, and upset people. That's not fun, so I've logged off forever now.

threeseed4• 13 years ago

If you are indeed 30 then you should know that Facebook isn't to blame because your country has screwed up privacy laws or because you don't know how to send posts to specific people.

michalu2• 13 years ago

Wow, have got some unresolved personal issues to respond that way? It's not about privacy and posting, I left facebook too, it has not much to offer and I find it a waste of time. There are better options to connect or spend time online for a 30 year old, it's as simple as that.

samstave• 13 years ago

App Idea: Create an app that will monitor your facebook for events/invites and email you about those only.

evincarofautumn2• 13 years ago

You can already do that with the website, under the Notifications section of Account Settings.

pduszak• 13 years ago

And just like that, 8 new startups are born.

recursive• 13 years ago

I thought minors were disallowed by the TOS? But then, I am hopelessly out of touch.

67726e• 13 years ago

Generally the demarcation line of age is 13 in the US due to the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act[1]

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children's_Online_Privacy_Prote...

hobs2• 13 years ago

I thought COPPA allowed a guardian to approve?

mikek• 13 years ago

This is anecdotal... not necessarily indicating a trend.

gk1• 13 years ago

True, but so are most op-ed pieces. It's a given that this is going to be one person's opinion and not necessarily everyone else's.

holyjaw• 13 years ago

There's a meta conversation to be had here about how this 13-year old girl had a well written op-ed piece posted on Mashable. Her bio there links to hellogiggles[1] where she is apparently a regular contributer. Arguably not the most prestigious publications nor the best writing, but I am still super impressed with her work.

[1] http://hellogiggles.com/author/ruby-karp

beloch• 13 years ago

I thought the article was very well written given her age. I do hope "Ruby Karp" is a pen name though. If not... Poor girl!

cgag• 13 years ago

13 and already over facebook. I'm glad I at least got to have a childhood largely free of the internet and social media.

leoedin2• 13 years ago

This isn't something new. When I was a teenager there was a whole load of pre-social-network blogging platforms, then along came Myspace, then Bebo, then Facebook. Everybody spent hours every night on MSN messenger.

The aspects that I use facebook for most - keeping in touch with fairly widely spread social groups - are not really relevant to a 13 year old. I don't think I'd have needed anything as complex as Facebook when I was 13. 13 year olds like to message each other, be it via SMS, IM or some social networking platform du-jour. Their messages are disposable nonsense that don't really need anything like the complexity of Facebook.

coldcode• 13 years ago

Exactly, its like saying teenagers don't use email. Everyone they care about is close by, you want to keep in close contact. Once you get past college many of your friends are very distant and you need slow asynchronous methods to keep in touch. Both my age friends from college and the next generation I met volunteering at a local university use Facebook for that exact reason.

hnriot• 13 years ago

Teenagers don't use email. They use iMessage.

threeseed4• 13 years ago

Odd because the growth of Instagram would suggest 13 year olds also like to comment in a way that is not disposable.

It's almost like 13 year olds are people too and don't operate as one homogenous block. I really think it would be better for everyone to stop pretending that they understand what EVERY 13 year old needs, wants or does.

leoedin2• 13 years ago

Reflecting back on the comments I made through most of my early teenage years, almost everything was disposable. The fact it didn't feel like that at the time is almost irrelevent.

How many teenagers today will look at their instagram comments as a 21 year old and consider anything other than a vaguely interesting window into their former naivety?

Obviously there will always be exceptions. This isn't really about teenage prodigies publishing great works though, it's about teenagers chatting to each other.

Dewie• 13 years ago

Their messages are disposable nonsense

Like most Facebook status updates? :)

nwzpaperman• 13 years ago

Once upon a time, Facebook was a quasi dating site with photos and commenting restricted to a person's sphere of influence. Today, Facebook is an advertising platform.

The end.

mdellabitta• 13 years ago

I probably still have Friendster, Orkut, and Tribe.net accounts. A lot of attempts have been made at what Facebook finally became successful at.

zooka2• 13 years ago

I didn't know facebook was complex, but I'm glad to hear young people are moving away from it

dageshi• 13 years ago

I've always felt that facebook was a better contacts management system than what came before, the "social" bit e.g. snooping on other peoples lives was just a really good way of keeping you engaged because it didn't exist before in such an accessible way.

I kind of wonder though whether we won't see a kind of craigslist aftermath effect, where craigslist comes along and provides a service which everyone wanted and then other startups choose particular niches and attempt to do them better.

badclient• 13 years ago

Because you're 13.

bgroins• 13 years ago

Facebook is so insignificant to her that she wrote an article about it.

logicallee• 13 years ago

Honestly, I doubt she wrote that. Why would she? This sounds like the work of a hoverparent.

Facebook used to be all I could talk about when I was younger. “Mom, I want a Facebook!” and other whining only a mother could put up with.

Sounds to me like the mother wrote that. Bet you anything her mom's a journalist.

icebraining2• 13 years ago

Well, her mother is Marcelle Karp, a "feminist writer, editor, and television director and producer". But it seems Ruby herself writes (and performs live) quite a lot, so I don't see why we should assume she hasn't written this.

hbnyc• 13 years ago

But they all use the hell out of a facebook owned company...

jff• 13 years ago

"A Facebook", "An Instagram", "We all had Instagrams", am I the only person who finds this incredibly annoying?

"Ten movies streaming across that, that Internet, and what happens to your own personal Internet? I just the other day got… an Internet"

jt2190• 13 years ago

French and Spanish speakers put articles in front of everything, and none of them seem too bothered by it.

Gormo• 13 years ago

Indefinite articles?

mhurron2• 13 years ago

Ya, kids really aren't up on technology.

But seriously, the internet is not something you just dump things on, it's not a big truck.

discostrings• 13 years ago

This, along with "I put it on my Facebook" and even "Do you have Facebook?" bother me every time I hear them. Unfortunately, this usage seems to be gaining momentum even outside colloquial conversation--I cringed when I first saw "Your Firefox is up to date".

While on the surface it's just a peculiarity, I think there's also an aspect of this sort of usage that masks the very notion of how things work. It subtly leads one to feel more that these are personalized, bespoke services rather than massive projects.

I generally try to take a descriptivist approach to language usage, but this one makes me cringe a little every time.

freshyill2• 13 years ago

Someone should write a blog about this topic.

joonix• 13 years ago

Like it or not, language is always evolving. Someone older than you was annoyed by your teenage vernacular as well.

Writing "account" after everything is kind of silly when I think about it. These aren't banks or wholesale vendors. I'm not sure what my Instagram "account" involves, it's just file storage. After all, we all understand what they mean by "I got an instagram," and it seems like English is always leaning towards function over form.

bobbles• 13 years ago

While I still have my facebook account, I've completely stopped posting updates. The number one reason is my dad and auties and uncles turn every post I make into a family conversation and theres nothing lamer than having your party photos discussed by your parents

needacig• 13 years ago

I'm no Facebook fanboy, but to the criticism about what happens when your friends share incriminating posts, I exasperatedly say: quit complaining and learn to use your privacy and sharing settings.

The issue of bullying is a serious and valid criticism though. I'm glad social networks weren't a thing when I was a teenager.

pekk• 13 years ago

Until Facebook decides to "forget" your settings, move where they are found and opt you back in again.

sczkid• 13 years ago

Can you give some evidence that Facebook actually does this?

adventured• 13 years ago

Amusingly, Facebook is primed to be disrupted by a college social network.

College is a high density social time in your life, and you're making a ton of new friends; those attributes among others make it ideal to escape the Facebook network effect.

No teenager really wants to hang out on the same social network as their parents.

gdilla• 13 years ago

Well this was obvious. When Facebook started, your parents, and grandparents had no idea what it was. And therefore it was interesting. Now, it's like a perfunctory listing of every human you know, including family members. It's like a phonebook. Employers look at it. Your Mom sees it. Is that fun? No, it's just mundane. Teenagers today see their parents using it all the time and think, well, what can I do on there that's fun? Ya.. Tell my grandma I did well in math class. Whupeee.

When we 30 somethings were young, our rents knew nothing of what we did online. And isn't that what we liked about it, at least in part?

superuser22• 13 years ago

Once you start to have a wider social network and meet new people (i.e., when multiple middle schools feed into a single high school, you can drive and develop friendships with people in other districts), email-like messaging by real name because a killer app and Facebook dominates.

I could not imagine, for example, navigating the landscape of my new college class of '17 online on a pseudonymous service like Instagram. Facebook is perfect for this.

honestcoyote• 13 years ago

This is true of my niece and her friends. When she was 11 and early 12, she was kinda obsessed with facebook, mainly because it was forbidden. But, now that she can get on it, she doesn't care much. Instagram, Snapchat, and sms are the way they all communicate. She thinks about getting a facebook account just to talk to the adult relatives that she likes and so she can annoy her mum with silly pics, but that's essentially putting facebook in the old people camp. And, knowing her laziness, I think in the end she probably won't even bother with it.

jongraehl• 13 years ago

Since the are so many suitable alternatives, what all the kids are doing varies from school to school. So this is just an isolated anecdote.

drill_sarge• 13 years ago

I only use Facebook to message other people and nothing else. Didn't look at all the other stuff (games and all that crap) for years. Also my usage of FB has declined rapidly lately. Mostly I and my buddies use better services for just messaging.

but: for me IRC is still around and never gets old. None of these fancy new social whatever stuff will beat it.

I'm 13 and None of My Friends Use Facebook

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