Facebook reportedly losing popularity among teens, highlighting a troubling trend

Facebook drops in pre-market on the report

The Bloomberg report highlights information from a group of researchers who compiled a report for Facebook's chief product officer, Chris Cox, reflecting a troubling trend that seems to be accelerating when it comes to the firm's namesake product.

The 'time spent' by US teens on Facebook was down 16% year-on-year and the number of new teen signups is also seen on the decline, with young people also taking longer to join Facebook (24 or 25, if ever) than they had in the past previously (19 or 20) too.

Other highlights of the report revealed that many new teen accounts are duplicates rather than unique new users and users across age groups are creating fewer posts.

Adding that Facebook employees are struggling to understand what has caused these trends or why product changes have failed to reverse them.

Well, for one, I would argue that the emergence of the likes of TikTok, Instagram, Twitter and Snap is certainly one jarring factor as all four occupy somewhat similar territories and functionalities that Facebook has to offer in this day and age.

Personally, I'm no active Facebook user (probably logged in 2-3 times in the last 10 years) so I wouldn't be the best to dig into what changes that have been made, especially in the last 4-5 years, to entice users to stay active on the platform.

In any case, the report above has knocked down Facebook shares in pre-market trading and that's a bit of a dent on tech sentiment ahead of the open later, with the firm also set to report earnings later in the day.

October 25, 2021 at 11:22PM

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