When my cohort was 12 facebook was cool as hell. Things really have changed, and I think OP is right. The facebook property has an expiration date.

But when your cohort was 12, were your parents on Facebook? Or were they on another platform (or no platform at all)? Facebook was the cool hen MySpace was the ew after all.

I quit Facebook when my mom and grandma started sending me friend requests. Maybe around 2009 or so.

Meta is cool, like Xi!

I read an article a while ago saying that for millennials, they love follower counts and likes, while zoomies will freely move between platforms with the days' trends without really caring about that stuff.

Personally I don't care about follower counts and likes and other such nonsense. I stick to one platform because I've met people there I like to chat with

I'm also not just consuming content and trying to stay ahead of trends.

Your view seems to ignore the temporal aspect, for one the original userbase of FB was students, they certainly weren't parents. FB hasn't been around that long, so to suggest anything has 'always' been the case ignores how this has been a very rapidly evolving ecosystem of software, from a generational point of view.

You're missing the forest for the tree. It doesn't matter what software platforms or communications methods are involved - children (or rather descendants, since they may be adults) generally do not wish to share the same social platform as their parents / older relatives.

I totally agree, that's the point of my comment even. This is a moving target, nothing 'always' about it. We're discussing the decline of facebook over time, and it started being popular with an entirely different age group than it is now.

I also think it's worth noting these are relatively new phenomenon, we haven't even had social networks for long enough to pin down trends so absolutely.

I appreciate my parents being on FB. But I’m an adult. I also left FB for a time though too.

I think FB can do real psychological harm so you have to be psychologically prepared for it.

Those college students grew up and that age group make up the bulk of facebook with their parents on as well.

Exactly, so it's not the case that FB has 'always' been for old people, is my point. It has evolved over time, as we're seeing most social networks doing. It seems hard to become a long term incumbent, but it's evolving in front of us.