Facebook has 3 billion users, many of whom are elderly.

“I don’t even remember the last time I logged on to Facebook,” said Devin Walsh, 24, who lives in Manhattan and works in public relations. “It seems like years ago.”

Facebook has 3 billion users but the future is uncertain picture 1 — Social media platform Facebook is about to turn two decades old. Photo: APF

Instead, she checks Instagram, which is also owned by Facebook parent company Meta, about five or six times a day. Then, of course, there's TikTok, where she spends about an hour a day. This year, Business Insider estimates that about half of TikTok's users are between the ages of 12 and 24.

For those who came of age around the time Mark Zuckerberg launched Facebook from his Harvard dorm room in 2004, it was inextricably intertwined with everyday life — even if it has faded somewhat over the years.

Facebook faces a particularly odd challenge. Today, 3 billion people visit it every month, or more than a third of the world’s population. And 2 billion log in every day. Yet Facebook is still fighting for its own future, two decades into its existence.

For the younger generation—those currently in middle school—it’s certainly not the place to be. Without this trendsetting demographic, Facebook, parent company Meta’s main source of revenue, risks fading into obscurity—as convenient but boring as email.

In the space of nearly a decade, Facebook has become a cultural staple, a constant in everyday conversation and late-night television, and even the subject of a Hollywood movie. Rival MySpace, which had launched just a year earlier, quickly became obsolete as the cool kids flocked to Facebook.

Debra Aho Williamson, an analyst at Insider Intelligence who has followed Facebook since its early days, noted that the site’s younger user base is declining. “The fact that we’re talking about Facebook being 20 years old… It’s still a very powerful platform around the world,” she said.

AOL was once very powerful, too, but its user base has aged and now the aol.com email address is just a joke among tech-illiterate people of a certain age.

Facebook chief Tom Alison sounded an optimistic note as he outlined the platform’s plans to appeal to young people. “The simple way I like to describe it is we want Facebook to be a place where you can connect with people you know, people you want to know, and people you should know,” Alison said.

Just as TikTok uses its artificial intelligence and algorithms to show people videos they didn't know they wanted to watch, Facebook is hoping to harness its powerful technology to win back the hearts of young people.

Mai Anh (according to AP, AFP, SCMP)

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