While it was strange to even ask people “Do you have Facebook” at one time, now more young adults say “I don’t remember the last time I was on Facebook”. Even couples and close friends add each other on Spotify, but Facebook doesn’t come to mind. The social media giant has been known to be in decline for a long time. Owner Mark Zuckerberg is still one of Silicon Valley’s most successful entrepreneurs, but his priority is no longer Facebook. The application, which started the era of social media and shapes our lives by introducing brand new concepts into our lives, is no longer among the platforms preferred by young people. Okay but why?
It will be almost 20 years since Zuckerberg founded Facebook in his dormitory at Harvard University. Founded in 2004, the social media giant was once a platform where all TV series, movies, social events were discussed, university classes shared their lecture notes in groups, and even people opened events and sent wedding invitations. It would not be wrong to say that Whatsapp, one of Zuckerberg’s companies, is performing that function today.
There was a Facebook, so what?
There are some issues Facebook is facing. It lost 2 million users in one quarter of last year alone. Today, 3 billion people visit the site every month. The platform reached 1 billion daily active users in 2015.
In those years, Facebook’s rise seemed unstoppable despite scandals such as the violation of users’ privacy and its failures to fight hate crimes. It was the preferences of young internet users that stopped the rise of Facebook.
Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook. Photo: Wikimedia CommonsFacebook, aka Meta, doesn’t quite explain the demographic research that shows how popular it is among young adults. However, independent studies and of course the statements of young people show that this number is decreasing.
Today, the Z generation sees Facebook as an “uncle-aunt place” while logging on to Instagram 5-6 times a day on average and spending almost an hour on Tiktok. Because Meta is one of the largest social media platforms with an average age. According to research, Generation Z sees Facebook as a platform where parents constantly post pictures of their children, make “irrelevant” status updates, and always have political debates.and finds them boring.
Insider Intelligence analyst Debra Aho Williamson, who has been following Meta since its early days, states that the future of communication is generally shaped by young people and continues:
“This is how Facebook started, young people turned to it. And we’re seeing this happen in almost every social media platform that has emerged since Facebook.”
Williamson emphasizes that this year, they assume that about half of Tiktok’s users are between the ages of 12-24.
Competing with Apple
Meta posted lower-than-expected revenue growth last year. He said it was partly inflation and partly Apple’s new regulation affecting Meta’s ad revenues. Apple’s giving users the option of “whether or not to be tracked between applications”, It is stated that Meta caused a decrease of approximately 10 billion dollars in advertising revenues.The company also faces content control and anti-trust regulations from governments around the world.
Despite the decline in user numbers, declining ad revenues and unattainable targets, Meta still makes a lot of money. The social media giant, for example, generated $33.67 billion in revenue in the last quarter of 2021, an increase of 20 percent compared to the previous year.
Meta age average is one of the biggest apps. Photo: FreepikBut now there is no doubt that Meta’s social media dominance is shaky. This is also evident from Zuckerberg’s investment in the metaverse or in apps like Instagram, Threads, rather than resurrecting the initial teardrop.
If we summarize the reasons why the social media giant is no longer in demand as before;
-Young people find the environment boring and quarrelsome;
-The emergence of many competing applications;
-Apple’s policies affect Facebook’s ad revenues.
Is the meta ‘ending’?
Yes, Meta lost 22 percent in 5 minutes in the stock market last year. Debra Aho Williamson That Facebook is still a very powerful platform around the world and that nothing is expected to happen to the platform, at least not anytime soon.transmits.
Considering how Myspace, one of Facebook’s predecessors, disappeared with its rise, and despite the increasing social media platforms and all the scandals the company went through, Facebook still has millions of users around the world, this prediction is not out of place.
Sources: CBS News, The Guardian, Fortune, sybershel.com, Vox
