Older users are turn-off on Facebook

IT may have been invented for students to use – but youngsters appear to be deserting Facebook in droves because it is now so popular with their parents and grandparents.

Almost a third of people aged 16 to 34 have deleted their accounts because they no longer see it as ‘cool’.

The trend comes as growing numbers of older users turn to the social network to stay in touch and share family pictures.

Nearly 60 per cent of Britons over 55 now have a Facebook account, according to research

Facebook has even started running TV adverts to entice the so-called ‘silver surfers’.

Now a survey of around 2,000 Britons has revealed that it is having the opposite effect on youngsters.

‘As parents are signing up, their children are logging off to maintain privacy,’ said Lord Jim Knight, chairman of online lobby group the Tinder Foundation.

In the poll, a third of Facebook users are said to have blocked a family member so they can no longer see their account or do not receive automatic updates.

One in ten people aged 16 to 34 signed up to other platforms so they could remain ‘under the radar of their parents’.

More than half said they had joined Twitter, where only 13 per cent of ‘silver surfers’ said they have accounts.

Meanwhile, about 40 per cent of youngsters use picture-sharing website Instagram, according to the study for Halifax by Opinium Research. Around the same proportion use Snapchat, a social media platform that automatically deletes messages shortly after they are sent.

The picture was very different among the over-55s. Only 3 per cent have an Instagram account and even fewer, around 1 per cent, use Snapchat.