Teens are jumping ship on Facebook for rival platforms

Teens are unfriending Facebook in droves as they move to cooler social media platforms, a new study says.

The percentage of American 13-to-17-year-olds on Mark Zuckerberg’s social network now sits at 51 percent, down from 71 percent in 2015.

The new numbers come from a Pew Research survey of teens and technology use, which found that Facebook now trails significantly behind Instagram and Snapchat — which 72 and 69 percent of teenagers say they use, respectively.

It was a 20 percent jump for Instagram, which is owned by Facebook, and a 28 percent pop for Snapchat.

The most popular platform for teens, however, was the video streaming site YouTube, which 85 percent of teens said they use for music and video.

The dip wasn’t unexpected for Facebook — the social network has struggled to stay relevant with younger audiences as their parents signed up to monitor their child’s social presence and stayed after the kids moved on to the visual nature of Snapchat and Instagram’s picture-based services.

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