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On Thursday, October 28, Eastern Time, at its annual conference called Facebook Connect, Facebook announced that Facebook would change its company name to "Meta," a new name that reflects the company's ambitions outside of social media, highlighting The company is focused on moving to emerging computing platforms, primarily virtual reality. The name change is the clearest sign that Facebook wants to bet its future on the Metaverse. Facebook said its shares will begin trading on Dec. 1 under the new symbol "MVRS." At the same time, Meta CTO also said: Oculus brand will be weakened until it disappears.

That was when a Facebook researcher shared some shocking statistics with colleagues earlier this year.

Since 2019, the number of Facebook teen users in the US has dropped 13% and is expected to drop 45% over the next two years. Young people aged 20 to 30 are expected to decline 4 percent over the same time frame.

Worse, the younger the users, the less often they used the app on average.

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Facebook is getting old

"The problem of aging is real," the researchers wrote in an internal memo. They predicted that if "fewer teens choose Facebook as they get older," the company would face a "serious" decline in younger users than expected.

If it doesn't fix the problem, the 17-year-old social network could lose an entire generation for the first time.

The internal document was part of a disclosure to the SEC and provided to Congress with legal counsel for Francis Haugan, a former Facebook employee turned prominent whistleblower.

Facebook has been trying to attract users under the age of 30 for years, dating back to 2012. But according to the filing, the problem of Facebook's churn of younger users has gotten worse recently. The aging of the app's audience is predicted to further drive young people away from it.

In order to solve the problem of user loss, Facebook began to attract young people and teenagers to use its photo and video sharing application Instagram, and formed a dedicated youth team to cater to them. In 2017, Facebook launched a standalone Messenger app for kids. However, plans for an Instagram version for kids were put on hold after lawmakers condemned the initiative.

At the same time, more and more young social networks are gaining popularity among young people, such as TikTok. Facebook has been tracking the phenomenon closely with its own research, with Facebook staff estimating that teens spend 2-3 times as much time on TikTok as Instagram, and that Snapchat is the go-to way for teens to communicate with their best friends.

"Our products are still widely used by teens, but we face stiff competition from the likes of Snapchat and TikTok," Facebook spokesman Joe Osborne said. "All social media companies want teens to use their services. We are no exception."

Facebook through the eyes of young people

In March, Facebook chief product officer Chris Cox presented a "health scorecard" of Facebook and Instagram usage among teens and young adults. Instagram remains popular with young people, but has lost engagement in key markets like the US, Australia and Japan.

The age of Facebook's user base is growing rapidly.

“Most young people think that Facebook is a place for people in their 40s and 50s,” “Young people find the content boring, misleading and negative. They often have to skip irrelevant content to find important content.” It added that they had “extensive negative associations with Facebook, including privacy concerns, impact on their wellbeing, and insufficient awareness of related services.”

A presentation to Cox in March indicated that in the U.S., "teenage acquisition is low and regressing further." In the app's top five countries, account registrations by users under 18 were higher than in the previous year. down 26%. For teens who were already registered on Facebook, the company went on to add that they were "seeing lower or worsening engagement compared to older cohorts." Messages sent by teens were down 16% from the previous year, while messages sent by users aged 20-30 were flat. People over 30 spend an average of 24 minutes more per day on Facebook than younger users.

Facebook measures its user base against the United Nations' population estimates for a given country. If a social network has the same number of monthly users in a certain age group as it estimates for that region, then it is fully saturated.

And right now, the average age of Facebook users is growing too fast, growing disproportionately with the average population age over time. If this continues, the average age of the Facebook app will continue to increase, potentially further alienating younger users.

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product update

Employees at Facebook and Instagram have spent the past year planning a slew of products tailored for teens and young adults in response to the mounting crisis, internal documents show. But they realize it's going to be an uphill battle on both platforms.

According to a November 2020 strategy document for young people, young people "don't think Facebook should be a place for complaining and finger-pointing, even though it seems prevalent on the platform". And "external forces such as negative media coverage further exacerbate this perception," it continued, equating to "Facebook needing to get ahead of the brand tax."

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An example of youth-oriented Facebook feature design from last November

Enables “us to build credibility and gain trust to expand into future areas,” such as mental health products. They have developed a multi-year plan to "connect young people to mentors for professional guidance" and "engage meaningful conversations around causes in order to take action locally with others".

Planned features include asking young people to update their friend networks to improve relevancy, as their connections are now "dormant and after collecting hundreds of friends over the years, it is difficult for them to derive any value from them" . Facebook began tweaking its News Feed algorithm specifically for young people, with the goal of testing the change as early as the second half of this year to show them "unconnected" content from accounts they haven't chosen to follow.

More new features were also discussed to let young people set up different profile identities specific to certain Facebook groups. Including a more visual version of the news feed tentatively called Spotlight and a "sentiment feed" to increase "access and engagement."

Facebook has been working on an unreleased version of Facebook Groups called Groups+, which it planned to start testing this year in a November filing, and is designed to let people join specific groups. Individuality and a "tight-knit community" as a way to "increase cultural relevance". The entire product pillar for the 20-30 crowd is focused on competing with LinkedIn, allowing people to host resumes and browse job or career advice in a dedicated feed.

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Pay attention to the privacy protection of young people

In the case of Instagram, much of Facebook's recent product work targeting young people has focused on reducing negative experiences for users. A report earlier this year said 7 percent of teens reported being bullied on Instagram, and 40 percent of the bullying happened in private messages. Other internal research documents reported earlier by The Wall Street Journal showed that teenage users experienced negative social comparisons and even depression when using Instagram.

With 61% of new teen accounts on Instagram opting to keep their profile private during initial setup, Instagram employees are encouraging more teenage users to keep their accounts private.

Instagram hopes to retain the youngest user groups through its emphasis on privacy protection.

“Adolescents seek a way to connect with friends but don’t want to share it with all their followers,” Facebook researchers wrote in a recent document. “They want to share easily with people they trust so they can feel valued. seen, accepted and recognized."

uncertain future

uncertain future

Michael Sayman, a 25-year-old former product manager for youth products, joined Facebook in 2014 when he was 17. With the rise of phone selfie cameras, social apps have become more visual, while Facebook has largely focused on text posts.

Part of Instagram's success comes from people sharing snippets of their everyday lives, which are then replaced by new content one day. This puts less pressure on users to share, and Instagram encourages the use of multiple accounts. But youth use of Facebook has continued to decline. By the time Sayman left in 2017, "the company had understood its importance very clearly, a whole generation ago."

Today, more and more teens are flocking to more immersive social gaming platforms, such as Fortnite or Sayman's current employer, Roblox. These 3D worlds with custom avatars appeal to young people looking to go online without the pressure of people judging them for their appearance or their surroundings. While a lot of traditional social media feels like a show, these virtual game worlds are fun.

It just so happens that this is also an opportunity for Facebook to change its name. In the future, Facebook will focus more on the metaverse, and games are an important entrance to the metaverse world.

Right now, Facebook isn't even sure its plans to win back young people are enough.

As he told Cox in March: "We believe it is too early to assess the effectiveness of a series of big bets on teens on Instagram and teens on Facebook, given the current competitive landscape. .”

Reference link:

Reference link:

https://www.theverge.com/22743744/facebook-teen-usage-decline-frances-haugen-leaks