(Credit: James Martin/CNET)

CNET’s Jennifer Van Grove believes that Facebook has become a social network that’s often too complicated, too risky, and, above all, too overrun by parents to give teens the type of digital freedom they crave.

Following are some of Solis’ thoughts in Van Grove’s article…

The under-13, tween crowd, including one CNET editor’s daughter, technically isn’t allowed to use the application, as dictated by the terms of service and a federal restriction (though the law is changing this July in ways that will make it easier for kids to join, something Facebook lobbied hard for). Yet kids found Instagram anyway, largely because their parents wouldn’t let them join Facebook, argues Altimeter Group principal analyst Brian Solis. Teens 13 and up joined Instagram, he said, because Facebook became “too great” a social network, where they’re now connected to their grandparents.

“We take pictures of food and landscapes,” Solis said, “but teenagers use [Instagram] to share pictures of themselves…the more you share, the greater the reaction, and the more you push outside comfort zones, the more people react.”

“Teens recognized Instagram as a social network before anyone else,” Solis said. “Everyone else treated it as a camera app.”