Teens increasingly moving the conversation to Twitter

By Mark Schaefer

For some time, I’ve been hearing that younger people are moving away from Facebook and congregating on Twitter for two reasons:

1) Mom probably isn’t on Twitter.

2) It’s a great place to follow favorite celebrities

Although there isn’t a lot of data to answer the “why,” new research from the Pew Internet & American Life Project confirms that Twitter is indeed experiencing a youth movement. But there is something more interesting here too …

While the number of teens on Twitter has more than doubled since late 2010, isn’t interesting to see that 5% dip between last August and December of 2012?

While the margin of error could contribute to that aberration, this implies that there is a probability that 17 percent of all teens using Twitter stopped using the service within a six-month period in 2012. That’s kind of mind-boggling, especially since there is no commensurate drop in the usage across other demographics to point to some issue that would affect everyone.

Any idea what could have happened last year?

Mark Schaefer is the chief blogger for this site, executive director of Schaefer Marketing Solutions, and the author of several best-selling digital marketing books. He is an acclaimed keynote speaker, college educator, and business consultant.  The Marketing Companion podcast is among the top business podcasts in the world.  Contact Mark to have him speak to your company event or conference soon.

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Illustration courtesy Flickr CC and Rosaura Ochoa

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