• by Erik Sass , Staff Writer @eriksass1, January 9, 2013

Could Facebook ever go the way of MySpace? Given its ubiquity and continued growth around the world, that may seem unlikely, but here’s an interesting fact to consider: more 10^th graders are using Tumblr than Facebook, according to a survey of 1,038 teens and young adults conducted by blogger and techie Garry Tan.

Tan used Survata to poll 546 teens ages 13-18 and 492 young adults ages 19-25 about their social media usage. Tan found that while 55% of the younger age group said they use Facebook, 61% said they use Tumblr. Meanwhile 22% said they use Twitter, 21% use Instagram, and 13% use Snapchat.

Does this mean that Tumblr will somehow replace Facebook, the way Facebook replaced MySpace (and MySpace replaced Friendster, if your memory goes back that far)? At first glance that may seem improbable, considering the two social networks have rather different “vibes,” as the kids probably never say nowadays.  But when you get down to it, how different are they, really? Facebook is an increasingly visual medium, with photos taking playing an ever-larger role in users’ autobiographical content streams; thus Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram, and the rise of other visual social media like Pinterest.

I’m not going to bet against Facebook just yet, but I can only imagine Tumblr ranks high on the list of things which keep Mark Zuckerberg up at night.

This week also brought some interesting data from eMarketer, citing research conducted in July 2012 by GfK Group. GfK found that people devote a significantly larger proportion of their smartphone usage to social media than their PC usage: overall they spent 31% of their total smartphone time to social media, compared to 18% for their PC usage. That compares to 16% of smartphone time spent on email, compared to 18% of PC time; 9% of smartphone time spent on video, compared to 13% of PC time; and 9% of smartphone time devoted to search, compared to 11% of PC time.