Back when the millennials were teens, Facebook was the epitome of social media platforms. But now, it is making desperate attempts to win Gen-Z teens over!
Often indicted as “Your Mom’s Social Media,” Facebook has slowly and steadily lost its grip on teens today.
Talking to The National Desk, a 19-year-old college student living in Florida, Esther Robinow, says, “Facebook is not all that interesting for us.” She says that many people her age seek out more entertaining content like reels and shorts, something that Facebook isn’t primarily known for. She added that all those who like viewing people’s lives will go to Instagram.
In fact, the 2023 Pew survey delivers a surprising revelation in context to this conversation. According to their survey, about one-third of the US teens that are between 13 and 17 are using Facebook. Back in the 2014 Pew survey, this number was reported to be 71% of teens.
Facebook is still popular amongst many generations of people but its current appeal is somehow drowning its capability to entice Gen Z.
In fact, the report by Data Reportal above shows that Facebook is still going strong in terms of numbers. But, losing on teens means losing grip on the future.
To stay ahead of this situation, Facebook has started to take desperate measures. The platform has decided to focus on feeds, reels, and creators.
Firstly, they are working on improving the discoverability of the feed. Basically, from now onwards, users of Facebook will see more reels and other posts from people who are not their Facebook friends.
But, the feed will cater to the personal interest of the user picked up by Facebook’s algorithm. This will further help Facebook to show you reels that you might like. Also, Facebook understands that 60% of time spent on this platform is spent on watching videos (as per Meta).
Further on, Facebook is trying to target “Young Adults”. To achieve that, Facebook will be delivering services like a marketplace, dating, groups, and events.
But many tech enthusiasts are seeing these moves with skepticism. See, for checking the local marketplace, there are services like Craigslist, Evite, etc. And for dating, we already have popular names like Tinder, Bumble, etc. Also, Robinow already talked about Instagram and its capability to deliver user-centric content.
So in the end, it would be interesting to see these developments and how they pan out.
Facebook may have been the heart and soul of the social media space, it may have been the preferred choice of teens ‘once’ but today it will be interesting to see whether these changes will improve the image of Facebook amongst teens or not.
