Considering that Faecebook started life as the sole domain of students, it’s hard to believe that Facebook is now suffering from an aging population. However it seems that everyone’s mothers, fathers, aunts and uncles have joined the social networking website just to see what the fuss is about.
While this may be bad news for those of us who like to post up photographs that could only be described as ‘dodgy’ and put our most crude thoughts in our status updates, it’s also bad news for Facebook itself.
No, Facebook isn’t ageist, but the prized advertising demographic of 18-24 has been diluted by the older generation joining Facebook, and the younger generation heading over Twitter.
This would perhaps also explain why Facebook has made constant changes to its status update tool in an attempt to become more like the micro blogging website.
Since January, the age group of 55 and over has seen an increase of 513.7% to a total of nearly 6 million users, just 1 million behind the under 17 demographic. The largest demographic on Facebook is no longer 18-24, it’s now 35-54 with over 20 million users.
It’s true that every user on Facebook ages, meaning they’ll move from one demographic to the next. Where Facebook seems to be failing is that it’s not attracting as many younger members anymore, younger members who will begin the cycle of moving up the demographic.
