Decrease in Usage of Facebook
According to “facebook-files-show-growth-struggles-as-young-users-in-u-s-decline“, it is evident that the usage of teenager in facebook has decreased. With the existence of pandemic and inability to socialize with other people outside, a lot of people use social media in order to connect within each other. However, the facebook growth did not last long , and the usage of facebook of teenager has been decreasing. Across the nation, the post has been decreasing over 13%, and despite the detailed research, the researchers do not seem to know the trends and why the product has been changed. So, what was the cause of the downfall of facebook in the first half of 2021?
The networks effects is the reason. Due to FOMO, fear of missing out, a lot of people started using Facebook. However, this is a positive trend for facebook, since due to the positive network effect, a lot of people stared posting online and used it as an entertainment. However, as facebook became more of a “old people social media” trend and due to the other social media popping, such as tiktok, the value of facebook has been decreasing proportionally. Furthermore, a lot of people use facebook as a strong tie, which enables people to communicate better, but it’s hard for users to gain information or get help from people who you have “strong ties” with, rather have weak ties and strong ties on other social medias, such as instagram or twitter, enabling the users, especially teenagers to have a better communication and get more information with. Furthermore, facebook was late to the game with personalization feed page, making users hard to connect with other users whom you may know. Although there was a “friends you might know” button, not many users seem to use it.
Links:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-10-25/facebook-files-show-growth-struggles-as-young-users-in-u-s-decline
https://www.theverge.com/22743744/facebook-teen-usage-decline-frances-haugen-leaks#:~:text=Teenage%20users%20of%20the%20Facebook,company’s%20most%20lucrative%20ad%20market.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/04/technology/facebook-files.html