Is Facebook buckling under its own weight?

Facebook may crumble under the weight of its own domination as young US teens seek out and select more filtered social media tools, a new report has suggested.

The eMarketer report titled ‘US Teens: Sizing up the Selfie-Expressive Generation’ suggests that the social media giant is vulnerable to a downturn, highlighting a dip in younger US teens activity in Q3 2013. The saturation of social media tools is credited as a factor “as teens test and adopt new social upstarts,” noted The Futures Company’s online Monitor Minute newsletter.

Sites such as Instagram, Vine and Snapchat have captured the attention of many who prefer the more selective nature of sharing, compared to Facebook’s larger social connections. Young teens are increasingly sharing on alternative tools, away from the prying eyes of adults, as parents continue to flood their dependants with friend requests.

“We expect this fragmentation to continue as teens test and adopt new social upstarts,” The Futures Company added.

Despite this news, Facebook is continuing to remain popular among teens and 20-somethings, with 95.9% of US social networkers aged 12 to 17 using the site in 2013. GlobalWebIndex said that as impressive as other tools growth rates were, they can’t realistically “mask the all-important fact that Facebook is still far and away the largest social platform and mobile app used”.

It seems the growing variety of social media isn’t so much eating away at Facebook, rather the tool is slowly losing its exclusive spot in the social space as mobile apps give people access to more.

Though the growing trend of telling life through pictures has led the to the rise of many new tools, Facebook is by far the best platform at adapting and facilitating new trends, as it continues to integrate popular features at the same time as maintaining its main functions.

Credit of Facebook’s downfall, on the other hand, might be the way in which it integrates these new trends. The social tool could eventually lose its purpose and flood itself with add-ons in the race to stay on-trend.

The only thing that is clear is Facebook’s continuing omnipresence in the mobile app world, and only time will tell if young teens grow up and discard the tool like a once-loved teddy bear.