Facebook's teen problem 'blown out of proportion', says COO Sandberg

Does Facebook have a teen problem? Yes. The social networking website has been seeing teenagers leaving the service in hordes. A few weeks ago Facebook CFO David Ebersman too admitted that the site was seeing a decrease in daily users, specifically among younger teens. Facebook’s COO, Sheryl Sandberg, though says that that problem is being “blown out of proportion”.

In an interview with AllThingsD , Sandberg reiterated what she said during the earnings call that the overall US teen usage of Facebook remains stable. Sandberg said that the vast majority of teens in the country were on Facebook and a majority of them use it everyday. “I think if you look at the way teenagers continue to use Facebook, we are useful to them,” she said.

Teen problem blown out of proportion, says Sandberg

Multiple reports had emerged, even as rumours about Facebook’s dwindling teen numbers came up, suggesting that the teens are heading onto image-focused social networking website like Instagram. The one name that went on to come up time and again was Snapchat. The self-destructing message service allows users to send pictures and videos to each other privately. Once viewed, the photo destroys itself, making it a perfect tool for teens to experiment with the service, especially with sexting.

It had then been reported that Facebook displayed interest in picking up Snapchat itself for $3 million, supposedly to bolster its own Poke app which works similarly. Sandberg in the interview went on to assert that Facebook was still the leader of the growing social sharing space and other products will continue to grow along with it. “People are doing more sharing. If they were doing less sharing, we’d be fighting for a piece of a smaller market. There’s a lot of competition out there, but it’s amid a growing market. That means there’s room for us to grow and others to grow as well,” she said.