Facebook has lost its popularity amongst older teenagers, for whom the social networking giant is ‘dead and buried’.

An extensive European study has revealed that the key age group is moving on to Twitter, Instagram, WhatsApp and Snapchat.

According to the Guardian, the Global Social Media Impact Study researched on the Facebook use of 16-18 year olds in eight EU countries and found that as parents and older users saturate Facebook, its younger users are shifting to alternative platforms.

Lead researcher Daniel Miller said that Facebook is not just on the slide, it is basically dead and buried adding that most of the teens feel embarrassed to even be associated with it.

The research found that teens weren’t concerned about how their information was being used for commercial purpose or as part of larger surveillance practice by security services, what concerned them was their parents’ friend requests.

It was revealed that 40 percent of users had never changed their privacy settings and 80 percent said they "were not concerned or did not care" if their personal data was available and accessed, either by an organisation or an individual.