{"id":2757,"date":"2022-01-27T17:46:21","date_gmt":"2022-01-27T16:46:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/monblogeur.tech\/index.php\/2022\/01\/27\/inside-facebooks-struggle-to-keep-young-people-the-verge\/"},"modified":"2022-01-27T17:46:21","modified_gmt":"2022-01-27T16:46:21","slug":"inside-facebooks-struggle-to-keep-young-people-the-verge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/monblogeur.tech\/index.php\/2022\/01\/27\/inside-facebooks-struggle-to-keep-young-people-the-verge\/","title":{"rendered":"Inside Facebook&#039;s struggle to keep young people &#8211; The Verge"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"cfbc967f0983488262956e73eca9483a\" data-index=\"1\" style=\"float: none; margin:10px 0 10px 0; text-align:center;\">\n<script async src=\"https:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js?client=ca-pub-3859091246952232\" crossorigin=\"anonymous\"><\/script>\r\n<!-- blok -->\r\n<ins class=\"adsbygoogle\" data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-3859091246952232\" data-ad-slot=\"1334354390\"><\/ins>\r\n<script>\r\n     (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});\r\n<\/script>\r\n\n<\/div>\n<p>Filed under:<br \/>The world\u2019s largest social network is internally grappling with an existential crisis: an aging user base<br \/>Earlier this year, a researcher at Facebook shared some alarming statistics with colleagues.<br \/>Teenage users of the Facebook app in the US had declined by 13 percent since 2019 and were projected to drop 45 percent over the next two years, driving an overall decline in daily users in the company\u2019s most lucrative ad market. Young adults between the ages of 20 and 30 were expected to decline by 4 percent during the same timeframe. Making matters worse, the younger a user was, the less on average they regularly engaged with the app. The message was clear: Facebook was losing traction with younger generations fast. <br \/>The \u201caging up issue is real,\u201d the researcher wrote in an internal memo. They predicted that, if \u201cincreasingly fewer teens are choosing Facebook as they grow older,\u201d the company would face a more \u201csevere\u201d decline in young users than it already projected. <br \/>The findings, echoed by other internal documents and my conversations with current and former employees, show that Facebook sees its aging user base as an existential threat to the long-term health of its business and that it\u2019s trying desperately to correct the problem with little indication that its strategy will work. If it doesn\u2019t correct course, the 17-year-old social network could, for the first time, lose out on an entire generation. And while Instagram remains incredibly popular with teens, Facebook\u2019s own data shows that they are starting to engage with the app less.<br \/>The internal documents are part of disclosures made to the Securities and Exchange Commission and provided to Congress in redacted form by legal counsel for Frances Haugen, an ex-Facebook employee turned prominent whistleblower. A consortium of news organizations, including <em>The Verge<\/em>, has obtained the redacted versions received by Congress. Some documents <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/articles\/the-facebook-files-11631713039\">served as the basis for earlier reporting in <em>The<\/em> <em>Wall Street Journal<\/em><\/a>.<br \/>Facebook\u2019s struggle to attract users under the age of 30 has been ongoing for years, dating back to as early as 2012. But according to the documents, the problem has grown more severe recently. And the stakes are high. While it famously started as a networking site for college students, employees have predicted that the aging up of the app\u2019s audience \u2014 now nearly 2 billion daily users \u2014 has the potential to further alienate young people, cutting off future generations and putting a ceiling on future growth. <br \/>The problem explains why the company has taken such a keen interest in courting young people and even pre-teens to its main app and Instagram, spinning up dedicated youth teams to cater to them. In 2017, it debuted a standalone Messenger app for kids, and its plans for a version of Instagram for kids were recently shelved after lawmakers decried the initiative.<br \/>At the same time, a rising crop of younger social networks has continued growing in popularity with young people \u2014 a phenomenon Facebook has closely tracked with its own research. In an internal presentation earlier this year, employees estimated that teens spend 2\u20133x more time on TikTok than on Instagram and that Snapchat is the preferred method of communicating with best friends for young people.<br \/>\u201cOur products are still widely used by teens, but we face tough competition from the likes of Snapchat and TikTok,\u201d Joe Osborne, a Facebook spokesperson, said in response to questions about the documents cited in this story. \u201cAll social media companies want teens to use their services. We are no different.\u201d<br \/>In March of this year, a team of data scientists at Facebook presented the company\u2019s chief product officer, Chris Cox, with \u201cheath scorecards\u201d for Facebook and Instagram\u2019s usage among teens and young adults. Instagram was still strong with young people but losing engagement in key markets, including the US, Australia, and Japan. And the age of Facebook\u2019s user base was increasing rapidly. <br \/>\u201cMost young adults perceive Facebook as a place for people in their 40s and 50s,\u201d according to the presentation. \u201cYoung adults perceive content as boring, misleading, and negative. They often have to get past irrelevant content to get to what matters.\u201d It added that they \u201chave a wide range of negative associations with Facebook including privacy concerns, impact to their wellbeing, along with low awareness of relevant services.\u201d<br \/>The March presentation to Cox showed that, in the US, \u201cteen acquisition is low and regressing further.\u201d Account registrations for users under 18 were down 26 percent from the previous year in the app\u2019s five top countries. For teens already on Facebook, the company was continuing to \u201csee lower or worsening levels of engagement compared to older cohorts.\u201d Messages sent by teens were down 16 percent from the previous year, while messages sent by users aged 20\u201330 were flat.<br \/>A \u201cparticularly concerning trend,\u201d according to one slide, was that time spent in the Facebook app by young people in the US had declined from the period before the onset of the coronavirus pandemic last year, when usage of Facebook\u2019s services momentarily spiked across the board. Another slide described \u201caddressing the existing engagement gap\u201d between younger and older users, saying that people older than 30 in the US were spending, on average, 24 more minutes per day on Facebook than younger users.<br \/>Facebook internally measures its user base against population estimates from the United Nations for specific countries. If the social network has the same amount of monthly users in an age bracket as what the estimates say for that region, it\u2019s fully saturated. The presentation to Cox explained that the average Facebook user age \u201chas been increasing disproportionately to the average population age over time. If this continues, [the Facebook app\u2019s] average age will continue to increase, potentially disengaging younger users even more.\u201d<br \/>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 \u201cremains the most concerning trend,\u201d the researchers noted, adding that the increased use of TikTok by teens meant that \u201cwe are likely losing our total share of time.\u201d <br \/>To address the growing crisis, employees at Facebook and Instagram have, for the past year, been planning a slew of products tailored for teens and young adults, according to the internal documents. But they recognize that it\u2019s going to be an uphill battle on both platforms.<br \/>Young adults \u201cfeel Facebook shouldn\u2019t be the place for rants and charged opinions, even though it seems prevalent on the platform,\u201d according to a November 2020 strategy document about targeting young adults. \u201cExternal forces such as negative media coverage further tarnish this perception,\u201d it continued, equating to \u201ca brand tax we need to get ahead of.\u201d<br \/>In order to address the \u201csignificant risk\u201d of young adults engaging less and less with Facebook over time, employees last November identified two \u201cbeached\u201d areas of focus, allowing \u201cus to establish credibility and gain trust for extension into future areas\u201d like mental health products. They laid out a multi-year plan to \u201cenable young adults to connect with mentors for professional guidance\u201d and \u201cengage in meaningful conversations around causes to take action locally with others.\u201d<br \/>Planned features included asking young people to update their friend networks to make them more relevant since their connections \u201care often dormant and they struggle to realize any value\u201d from them after collecting hundreds of friends over the years. They began work to tweak the News Feed algorithm specifically for young adults, with the goal of testing the change as early as the second half of this year, in order to show them \u201cunconnected\u201d content from accounts they didn\u2019t choose to follow. <br \/>The employees also discussed letting young people set different profile identities that were specific to certain Facebook groups. Other products included a more visual version of the News Feed tentatively called Spotlight and \u201cmood feeds\u201d to increase \u201cvisitation and engagement.\u201d <br \/>The documents show that, as part of its youth push, Facebook has been working on an unreleased version of Facebook Groups called Groups+, slated in the November document to begin testing as soon as this year, that is intended to let people join groups for specific personalities and \u201cclose-knit communities\u201d as a way to \u201cincrease cultural relevance.\u201d A whole pillar of products targeting people between the ages of 20 and 30 is focused on competing with LinkedIn, allowing people to host resumes and browse for jobs or career advice in a specialized feed.<br \/>Joe Osborne, the Facebook spokesperson, said, \u201cWe continuously explore new products and experiences for people, but these efforts either evolved or never left the exploration phase.\u201d<br \/>For Instagram, much of the product work targeting young people has recently focused on reducing the negative experiences of social comparison and bullying that they report. A presentation from earlier this year said that 7 percent of teens report experiencing bullying on Instagram and that 40 percent of all bullying happened in private messages. Other internal research documents, some of which were earlier <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/articles\/facebook-knows-instagram-is-toxic-for-teen-girls-company-documents-show-11631620739?mod=article_inline\">reported on by <em>The Wall Street Journal<\/em><\/a>, show that teens have told the company they experience negative social comparison and even depression from using Instagram. <br \/>Sixty-one percent of new teen accounts on Instagram choose to make their profiles private on initial setup, the presentation said, adding that Instagram employees wanted to make \u201cnudging\u201d product tweaks to encourage more young users to set their accounts to private. The documents show that secondary, private \u201cfinsta\u201d accounts have also been exploding in popularity, especially among Instagram\u2019s youngest users \u2014 behavior that employees want to encourage as a way to retain young people.<br \/>\u201cTeens seek a way to connect with their friends, but don\u2019t want to share with all their followers,\u201d the company\u2019s researchers wrote in one recent document. \u201cThey want to easily share with just the people that they trust so that they feel seen, accepted, and validated.\u201d<br \/>Attracting young people and keeping them engaged remains top of mind inside Instagram. Adam Mosseri, the head of the app, in May told employees that Instagram\u2019s goal is to be \u201ca place where young people define themselves and the future,\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2021\/10\/16\/technology\/instagram-teens.html\">according to <em>The New York Times<\/em><\/a>.<br \/>Losing young people wasn\u2019t always the existential threat for the blue Facebook app that it is now, according to Michael Sayman, a 25-year-old former product manager for youth products who joined the company in 2014 when he was just 17. With the rise of selfie cameras in phones, social apps became more visual while Facebook stayed mostly focused on text posts.<br \/>Copying Stories from Snapchat \u2014 which reduced the pressure people feel to share everyday snippets of their lives by making them disappear \u2014 has helped keep younger users on Instagram, as has encouraging the use of multiple accounts. But Facebook\u2019s use by young people has stayed on a consistent decline. By the time Sayman left in 2017, \u201cthe company had understood very clearly the importance,\u201d he told me. \u201cIt\u2019s an entire generation.\u201d<br \/>Nowadays, teens are increasingly flocking to more immersive, social game platforms like <em>Fortnite<\/em> or Sayman\u2019s current employer, <em>Roblox<\/em>. These 3D worlds with custom avatars appeal to young people who are looking to be online without the pressure of people judging their appearance or surroundings. And while a lot of traditional social media can feel like a performance, these virtual game worlds are fun. Incidentally, Facebook is planning to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/2021\/10\/19\/22735612\/facebook-change-company-name-metaverse\">rebrand its corporate name<\/a> to focus on the metaverse, which could partly be an effort to try to appeal to young people again. <br \/>For now, Facebook isn\u2019t even sure if its plans to win back young people are enough. As the March presentation to Cox bluntly said: \u201cWe believe it\u2019s 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.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/22743744\/facebook-teen-usage-decline-frances-haugen-leaks\">source<\/a><\/p>\n<!--CusAds0-->\n<div style=\"font-size: 0px; height: 0px; line-height: 0px; margin: 0; padding: 0; clear: both;\"><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Filed under:The world\u2019s largest social network is internally grappling with an existential crisis: an aging user baseEarlier this year, a researcher at Facebook shared some alarming statistics with colleagues.Teenage users of the Facebook app in the US had declined by 13 percent since 2019 and were projected to drop 45 percent over the next two [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"googlesitekit_rrm_CAow1sXXCw:productID":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2757","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-non-classe"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/monblogeur.tech\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2757","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/monblogeur.tech\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/monblogeur.tech\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monblogeur.tech\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monblogeur.tech\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2757"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/monblogeur.tech\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2757\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/monblogeur.tech\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2757"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monblogeur.tech\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2757"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monblogeur.tech\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2757"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}