• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, June 16, 2014

Overall, the social giant has seen younger users decrease their time on the site by 4%, over the past year, while average daily visit times have dropped from 28 minutes to 22 minutes.
 
That’s according to new data from Luth Research, which based its findings on a 30,000-member online panel.
 
“The landscape of social media continues to evolve as consumer wants and desires change,” Becky Wu, Ph.D., Senior Executive Vice President Research at Luth Research, explains in the new report.
 
“Passive online behavior tracking reveals a gradual, but clear, shift away from dominant social networks like Facebook,” according to Wu. “The young age cohort is seeking out other social media destinations for meeting new people and a unique experience.
 
While it continues to grow in size and revenue, Facebook is no stranger to gloomy forecasts.
 
At the beginng of the year, iStrategyLabs, determined that the number of U.S. consumers ages 13-17 using Facebook declined 25.3% from 13.1 million in January 2011 to 9.8 million in January 2014, while the number of users ages 18-24 declined 7.5% from 45.4 million to 42 million over the same period.
 
Another recent survey by the USC Annenberg Center for the Digital Future and Bovitz, Inc. found that roughly one in three (30%) Facebook users believe they will be using the service less within the next five years.
 
Researchers at Princeton’s Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering predicted that the social giant would lose 80% of its user base by 2017. (In response, Facebook’s data scientists employed the PhDs’ own methodology to prove that Princeton was on track to lose its entire student body by 2021.)
 
Looking ahead, Wu said of young users and their wandering online activity: “They are the leading indication of what is to come in the next big wave in social media."
 
For its findings, Luth Research relied on its ZQ Intelligence permission-based technology platform, which tracks consumer behaviors and activities across desktops, laptops, smartphones and tablets.