San Francisco — Facebook is lucky it owns Instagram. This year, the world’s largest social network will see a decline among teen users in the US, according to a forecast by EMarketer. It is the first time the research company has predicted a fall in Facebook usage for any age group. EMarketer predicts 14.5 million people from the ages of 12 years to 17 years will use Facebook in 2017, a drop of 3.4% from the prior year. Teens are migrating instead to Snap’s Snapchat and Instagram, the photo-sharing app that Facebook owns, the research company said Monday in a statement. Facebook has continued to grow around the world, with more than 2-billion users in 2017, but younger people are finding it less compelling, said Oscar Orozco, a forecasting analyst at EMarketer. The company needs to attract younger users so they build a Facebook habit that will carry into their adult years, when they become prime customers for Facebook advertising. "Teens and tweens remaining on Facebook seem to be l...
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