Are you a teenager with parents as friends on Facebook? Does it seem like they post meaningless articles or embarrassing middle school pictures you thought you deleted years ago? If so, you understand how parents ruined Facebook. Facebook used to be a place where teenagers posted their thoughts, memories, or a “happy birthday” to a friend’s wall. Over the past few years, this dynamic changed. Now it’s common for teens to have one or both parents on their friend list. With more and more adults signing up for a Facebook account, teenagers sign off and join new social media networks. Social media networks go in and out of fashion over time. As a result, new places are created for teens to network together without being flooded by adults and parents.

“It’s me; I’ve ‘ruined’ Facebook for the cool kids.”

First of all, the popularity of Facebook has decreased over the past few years. In 2012, 42% of teens noted Facebook as the most important social media site. As of 2013, just a mere 23% of teens said this. Adults are the biggest reason the popularity of Facebook among teens has decreased. One mom, Jen Simon, said, “It’s me; I’ve ‘ruined’ Facebook for the cool kids.” Moreover, Simon explained that parents, specifically moms, mainly use Facebook as a 21st century photo album to showcase and brag about their children. These photos include awkward first-day-of-school shots, naked baby pictures, and embarrassing captions that accompany those photos. No wonder teens flock to other sites. Their parents embarrass them by posting photos and statuses for—what seems like—the whole world to see.

Adding to that, Mary Jane James is a mom of a college freshman and has a Facebook account. She said, “I don’t post much, but if I do, it’s about my daughter.” James finds herself almost addicted to the site—wanting to know what is going on in her daughter’s life and her friends’ lives—by signing on three to four times a day. She admitted to “stealing” photos her daughter was tagged in and making her own album of the collection of pictures. James also said she is friends with other mothers on Facebook that post about their children as well. From this, James is just another typical mom on Facebook.

As teenagers join other social media networks, they are relieved to find very few parents clogging their news feeds. A survey of the most important social media sites for teens was given to 8,650 teens. From the chart, we can see while Facebook’s popularity decreased by 19%, Instagram’s popularity increased by 11%. As of the fall of 2013, Facebook and Instagram were tied in popularity.

Image from Huffington Post.

It is a feat that Instagram reached the same popularity as Facebook in around a third of the time Facebook has existed and with only one tenth as many users. Also, even though Facebook proved to be the most important network among teens in 2012, Twitter took the title in 2013.

Many high school and college students have had their Facebook accounts since middle school. Consequently, these same students are not big participators now-a-days. One high school freshman said ,”I got mine [Facebook account] around sixth grade. And I was really obsessed with it for a while. Then towards eighth grade … if you make a Twitter and an Instagram, … you’ll just kind of forget about Facebook …” This girl, along with many other teens, simply became tired of Facebook. We saw this happen to MySpace as well. Many of my friends had MySpace accounts in fourth, fifth, and six grade. Then, most of them moved to Facebook. Currently, I follow and tweet the majority of my friends because—after moving away from Facebook—they are networking on Instagram and Twitter. From the small group of people I knew throughout my elementary, middle, and high school years, I see a trend. A new social media site is introduced and is popular among teens for a few years, and then everyone moves on to the next best thing.

Moreover, as parents become more tech savvy, they try to fit in with the “cool crowd” by joining these sites a year or two after they are popular among teens. As parents join websites, such as Facebook, teens are forced to avoid them and move on to the next site. Then, parents follow their teens’ footsteps and join that same, new site. I predict that this trend will continue as new social media sites are created. For teens, there will always be a need for parent-less social media sites.

Because parents are on the same sites as their children, teens feel the need for independence. Having your mom controlling your life offline is enough. Ever since she friended you on Facebook, it seems like you can’t get away from her. Teens in these situations jump at any chance of freedom and independence. Conversely, teen independence scares parents because their little munchkins are now grown up and doing bigger and better things. While the teen years are about experimenting with independence, some mistakes—such as sharing too much information online—can lead to consequences for the teen and his or her family. The reality is that parents hope their children will never fail. However, failure is a part of being independent. One parenting website puts it best: “Your eventual goal should be to hand over the ship’s wheel to your teen, confident that you have passed on the skills needed to manage the ship.” If parents instill a solid foundation and make expectations clear for their children, teens can be independent while parents feel safe as their kids browse online.

While parents may .excel at being parents, they don’t understand the do’s and don’t’s of the social media world. They embarrass their teens, which cause the teens to leave Facebook in the dust, and move on to other, less parent-populated social media. Parents tend to follow their teens to these new social media sites, which takes away the teens’ independence. This, once again, pushes teenagers to network elsewhere in order to gain this independence back. Even though teens today despise their parents’ behavior on Facebook, those same teens will eventually grow up to be the parents that flaunt their own children on the next, big site. This proves to be a never ending cycle; will you be the one to stop it?