There have been a lot of articles floating around in the past two days, sharing recently collected data that shows that teens and young adults prefer Facebook to blogging or Twitter. People seem shocked by this. They are blaming the fall of MySpace for young people’s recent disinterest in blogging, and are baffled that they never really jumped on the Twitter bandwagon. I’m not a teen, or even a young adult, and anyone who knows me knows that I’m definitely not a fan of Facebook, but it still feels obvious to me. Of course young people prefer Facebook! And, this is why: Facebook delivers what teens are looking for, and demands very little in return.

Instant Feedback

When you write a blog post, you may or may not get comments or responses. Unless you’re doing some serious marketing, you may not even have many readers — making comments even less common. On Twitter, it’s easy to get lost in the steady stream of Tweets.

On Facebook, no matter what you post on your wall, you’re likely to get a response within minutes. No waiting, no working. Why wouldn’t this appeal to teens? They say something, and somebody responds. People are listening. They have a voice.

A Positive Response

When you’re a blogger, you have to have a thick skin. If you write your opinions or convictions, you’re going to get pushback from at least some of your readers. If you don’t give an opinion, they’ll get on your case for that too. On Twitter, you take the same chance. Whatever you put out there could possibly offend any number of people — and you may hear about it.

On Facebook, most everyone reading your wall is someone you actually know. Real friends (if not cyber-friends). They’re there because they already like you. You don’t need to win their approval. If you want to post “I had eggs for breakfast this morning,” chances are you’ll get responses like “I LOVE eggs!,” and “I had eggs yesterday!” on Facebook. On Twitter, you’re asking for a “Who cares!” Doesn’t it makes sense that teens would enjoy the guaranteed acceptance they get by surrounding themselves (and their thoughts) with friends, the way they do on Facebook?

Eavsdropping on Conversations

In the blogging world, conversations are fairly slow (unless you find yourself in the middle of a heated Mac vs. PC comment war). Somebody says something. 20 minutes (or 3 hours) later somebody says something else. And maybe the author chimes in once or twice. B-o-r-i-n-g. And, why would teens care anyway about what a bunch of people they don’t even know have to say?

On Twitter, conversations happen so fast it’s almost impossible to keep up. I was trying to follow the iPad conversation last week. TweetDeck was refreshing with 100 new tweets every few seconds. And, again — mostly from people I don’t know.

On Facebook, it’s easy to follow a conversation. Conversations are indented and easy to read through, easy to join in on, and easy to go back to later. Teens aren’t interested in throwing their thoughts out to the black void of the internet, they want to have a conversation with their friends, and Facebook makes it easy for them to do that.

Easy Multi-media

Sending a photo or video with Twitter is a practice in patience. Going back and looking for them later is even more frustrating. Even searching through a person’s blog posts of photos is annoying when you’re looking for a particular post or photo and you can’t remember when you saw it, or what title the post had.

Facebook makes it extremely easy for teens to share photos, videos, drawings, music, etc. They are all in one place, they are easy to scroll through, and they are easy to comment on. Enough said.

No Work, No Expectations

I’m not sure how many of those who were surprised that teens no longer blog have actually blogged themselves. It’s a lot of work. And it takes a lot of time. Do you remember being in high school? I barely found time to eat and sleep — I have no idea how teens EVER maintained full-fledged blogs.

Doesn’t it make sense that a teen would rather post some photos (worth 1,000 words), post some comments, and post some wall thoughts — and call it a day? I’m sure there are some teens out there who are aspiring writers, and I know of some young adults that maintain stellar design blogs — but they are not in the majority. I’m not surprised that most teens prefer not to spend hours a day composing blog posts. I know that wouldn’t have been appealing to me at that age.

Bragging Rights AND Control

With Twitter, the goal is to have the most followers. In blogging, it’s to have the most readers. In Facebook, it’s to have the most friends. The beauty of Facebook, though, is that you have some control over who those friends are. You decide how much you want to share, how you want to share it, and who you want to share it with. All while showing off your growing number of friends. It’s true you can block users on Twitter — but do you even know enough about anyone on Twitter to make the decision to block them? And, if I don’t like you, I surely can’t keep you from reading my blog or making comments. But, on Facebook, if you stole my boyfriend, I don’t have to let you see my photos or read my wall. Gotta love that control. Teens can keep their cliques as open or closed as they like.

Amateur Snooping

I’m sorry to call you out, but I know that about half of the people who have sent me friend requests on Facebook just wanted to go through my profile and photos to see what I was up to and what I looked like. Don’t be ashamed if you’re guilty — I am too. It’s fun to look through other people’s photos and wall posts and profiles. You can’t do that while blogging or tweeting. You don’t learn much about a person in 140 characters and a background design, and all I know about my readers is the information they leave me in the comments. Facebook allows you to really get to know the people you are interacting with. Just another Facebook feature that has tons of appeal for teens.

As far as teens are concerned, Facebook is really built for them. I’m not at all surprised that young people are Facebook fans. And, I’m even less surprised that they prefer it to Twitter and blogging. It seems obvious to me. But, please let me know what you think! Are you a teen who knows I’m wrong? I’d love to hear your thoughts!