Facebook has been struggling to attract younger users for more than a decade, and senior employees are alarmed over the company’s inability to keep teens engaged.
According to a new report from The Verge, Facebook and its sub-brand Instagram are losing young users at a shocking rate as the millennials and Gen Z now opt for more immersive social game platforms like TikTok, Snapchat, Fortnite, Roblox, and more.
Teenage users on Facebook in the US are projected to drop 45 percent over the next two years, notes the report, driving an overall decline in daily users in the company’s most lucrative ad market.
“Young adults between the ages of 20 and 30 were expected to decline by 4 percent during the same timeframe,” the report noted, quoting internal Facebook documents.
Instagram was doing better with young people, with full saturation in the US, France, the UK, Japan, and Australia.
“But there was still cause for concern. Posting by teens had dropped 13 percent from 2020 and remains the most concerning trend,” the report notes.
To address the growing crisis, employees at Facebook and Instagram have been planning products tailored for teens and young adults, according to the internal documents. However, they recognize that it is going to be an uphill battle on both platforms.
“We believe it’s too early to assess the effectiveness of our current suite of big bets for teens on Instagram and young adults on Facebook, and whether they are sufficient given the current competitive landscape,” Facebook concluded.
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