Just when all the grown ups started figuring out Facebook, college and high school users have declined in absolute number by 20% and 15% respectively in a mere six months, according to estimates Facebook provides to advertisers that were archived for tracking by an outside firm. Facebook users aged 55 and over have skyrocketed from under 1 million to nearly six million in the same time period. There are more Facebook users over 55 years old today than there are high school students using the site.

So if the younger generation is indeed leaving Facebook, the question is where are they going?  A return to MySpace seems pretty unlikely.  Just where are those 18-25 year old folks that advertisers love trying to run and hide to?

First of all, its a big “if”.  It’s very possible that the true problem is that 18-25 year olds simply are not indicating the high school or college that they attend or graduated from.  Since this is no longer a requirement like it was in Facebook’s earlier days, the numbers could easily shift over time.  Perhaps we are seeing that.

One of the most interesting possibilities is that they’re heading to the closed off world of email.  The most interesting comment on Marshall’s post was from a recent college graduate.

I, as a recent graduate, do not use Facebook anymore because of e-mail. I would say that most of high school, and college, students have not discovered e-mail yet, as email is used a lot in corporate America. Ever since I started working, where I had to use e-mail all the time, I switched to e-mailing friends instead of going to Facebook. A few of my friends have done the same thing.

That’s an amazing revelation, people being exposed to email for the first time and liking it so much that they’re getting off the Facebook boat.  Meanwhile almost everyone I know (I’m 38 years old) is trying do the opposite – break free from  these archaic, closed off systems like email and have conversations out in the open where they can be easily and efficiently discovered. 

This is an excellent addition and will help me make decisions on whether the account is legit or not and whether I should reciprocate with a follow.  

Of all the social networks I am a part of, Twitter is the one that is most compatible with my workflow.  I’m a short attention span kind of guy and feel like participating with my friends on Facebook involves me dedicating an hour here and there.  That’s not happening.  With Twitter, I can drop in for 5 minutes at at time, write a tweet or two and catch up on recent activity of the folks I’m following.  It’s the new “smoke break”.

It helps me get to know people faster

It’s amazing what you can learn about people in short bursts.  There are many people that I’ve yet to meet in person that I know so much in person.  Like they listen to Pavement or Sam Cooke.  Or are as obsessed with the Boston Red Sox as I am.

It allows me to spend less time in Google Reader

Instead of opening up Google Reader to read feeds of my favorite blogs, I’m using the folk I follow in Twitter to alert me to things I should view and read.  My Twitter friends have become my trusted sources.

Everyone else loves it, too

Admit it.  You love Twitter.  Sure, it may make you crazy and piss you off whenever it presents you with a picture of a whale.  But every significant relationship you’ve ever had has parts to it that you can’t stand.  We all put up with it and we’ll all continue to put up with it for the foreseeable future. Divorce is not imminent, no matter what some people may think. In fact, we all seem to be rooting for Twitter to exceed beyond our wildest imagination.  In that fashion, using Twitter is like going to a casino and joining a craps table.  While the other casino games are very individual affairs, playing craps is a communal activity where everyone roots for the person with the dice to throw the perfect roll.  On Twitter, we’re all just standing around the table rooting for Twitter.

This time around, it will make an interesting case study for the state of the web in its evolved, participate state.  On November 4, if you’re not at Obama campaign headquarters, Twitter will be the place to be.  My prediction is that Twitter conversations will cross over into mainstream media and we’ll see someone like Wolf Blitzer quote a tweet or two on air.

But that’s what I want.  It’s what most of us want.  I want to add a friend on Facebook and then instantly be follwing him on Twitter and connected to him via LinkedIn and all the rest.  Currently, my main practice of sync’inc my contacts across the various social networks is similar to having to balancing my checkbook.  For those you young ones out there, there was once a time when we didn’t have 24/7 online access to our bank accounts.  Every month the bank would send us a statement in the mail and folks would (or should have) compare that transaction log with the transaction log you kept in your checkbook register.  Let me tell you, I don’t miss that process.  It sucked.  It was an evening every month I dreaded.  Dreaded it so much I wouldn’t even do it.

And that’s how I feel about sync’ing my friend data across the social networks.  It sucks.  I dread it.  Dread it so much that sometimes I don’t do it.  But yet, when it is sync’d up, I love it.  And just like balancing your checkbook or flossing your teeth every night, it needs a routine to get it done.  I call this current routine "First Friday."  Here’s how it works. 

I’m working on the premise that the new people I’m trying to follow are in my email address book.  So I get a .csv file of that data, then use it on each social network one by one.  And I do this on the first Friday of every month.  No, its not flawless.  Obviously, I’m "meeting" people in places like Twitter who aren’t in my address book.  In fact, I have many friends on Twitter whose real name I don’t even know, let alone use know their address book.  And another bummer, is that new folks in my address book are going to receive tons of bacn that has been generated on my behalf. 

So yeah, its clearly not ideal.  But banking has evolved and I know longer have to spend an evening to balance my checkbook every month.  Let’s hope that managing our social graph will evolve in similarly useful ways.