So while mobile ad revenue may be boosting Facebook's health, it's no secret kids wants their own, parent-free playground. For example, Twitter has seen a 16% increase in teen usage from 2011 to 2012. Not that Twitter is parent-free but it's easier to avoid them.

 

Summarizing its recent BI Intelligence report on teen's mobile-first usage, the publication wrote, " we may be witnessing is the unraveling of a unitary, centralized social media landscape, dominated by Facebook, into a set of multipolar nodes. Facebook warded off the Instagram threat by buying the company, but it won't always be possible for the company to neutralize threats with acquisitions."

 

It's no secret services like Snapchat and the recently Yahoo!-acquired Tumblr have been heavily fueled by teen usage. In fact, a recent Survata survey found more 13-18-year-old teens (61%) use Tumblr than Facebook (55%).

Perhaps, lending the best insight into this apparent shift by teens away from Facebook, 13-year-old Ruby Karp wrote in a Mashable article, I'm 13 and None of My Friends Use Facebook, "Part of the reason Facebook is losing my generation's attention is the fact that there are other networks now. When I was 10, I wasn't old enough to have a Facebook. But a magical thing called Instagram had just come out ... and our parents had no idea there was an age limit. Rapidly, all my friends got Instagrams. Teens are followers. That's just what we are. If all my friends are getting this cool new thing called Snapchat, I want it, too! We want what's trending, and if Facebook isn't 'trending,' teens won't care."