So, basically, they're rebelling against Facebook's "real name" initiative that completely changed the internet.

I never thought using your real name on the internet was going to catch on. I was terribly mistaken.

But is that because the world has actually changed, of because they are young? Teens have always been counterculture and rejected the status quo. The real question is whether Facebook will be compelling to them when they grow up.

I was a (young) teenager when MySpace was at its peak and was still an (older) teenager when Facebook got big. The thing about things like myspace and facebook is that users are encouraged to make their profile a representation of themselves. Your Facebook profile was meant to be like your avatar that expresses who you are and is an extension of your identity. I think that attitude is where many of the current problems with social media came from. This trend seems like a pretty big shift in attitude. I'm sure it will bring its own problems, but I hope it will also fix some things that make facebook so detrimental to society.

You might be interested in this related article by the founder of Signal. It touches on the same point.

https://signal.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/

"The device’s address book is now the social network, so using phone numbers as an identifier has reduced switching costs by putting a user’s social network under their control. In a way, the notification center on a mobile device has become the federation point for all communication apps, similar to how older desktop IM clients unified communication across multiple IM networks."

I’d be interested in listening to that podcast, what’s it called?

It's a famous Brazilian podcast, unfortunately there's no transcript, but here's the link: https://www.b9.com.br/shows/braincast/geracao-z/

They had a teenager as guest and the talk dynamic was good, with a lot of Q&A. Since I don't usually interact w/ teenagers I was completely blind to how they were using the web today.

Wow, I didn't know B9 had released an episode on this matter. Thanks for pointing it out!