It’s true that Facebook is increasingly turning into an “old people’s platform.”
Increasingly, it’s more likely that your grandma uses it than a teenager.
Table of Contents
Facebook usage declining among younger people
Mark Zuckerberg wants teens to come back to Facebook, but it’s not easy.
It turns out that if you ask teens to come back to a platform that their parents use, they will (not so politely) say, “No, thank you.”
In 2012, 94 percent of teenagers had a Facebook account. In 2024, that figure is 27 percent.
Pew Research on teen social media use
According to Pew Research, 2 out of 3 teens never use Facebook. That 33 percent usage rate is higher than what’s reported above, but many might use the platform under so-called ghost accounts.
Zuckerberg recently vowed to reverse this trend, saying that he wants Facebook to make “serving young adults the North Star.”
Many analysts think this will be what many teens call “mission impossible.”
Teenagers have already shifted to alternative platforms.
Usage by platform
TikTok, for example, is used by 73% of them today.
Instagram, a Facebook property, is also much more popular at 76%.
Snapchat has 75% of teens using it.
39 percent use Twitter.
32 percent use Pinterest.
3 percent use LinkedIn.
YouTube, if it’s considered social media, is by far the most popular.
Related: TikTok Statistics
Can Facebook adapt?
Time will tell if Facebook can successfully reverse the decline among young adults. It’s been Zuckerberg’s big worry for years now.
However, that’s why Facebook renamed itself Meta in October 2021 to better describe its new evolution into virtual reality.
This follows an analogous move by Google to rename itself Alphabet in 2015 to reflect a more diversified business model as it branched out beyond its search engine.
