Katie Paul
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Meta said on Friday its flagship Facebook (NASDAQ:) app is attracting the largest number of young people in three years as it tries to shake the platform’s reputation as a stronghold of older generations.
More than 40 million adults in the United States and Canada aged 18 to 29 view Facebook daily, the social network said, the first time it has published such demographic information. Facebook, whose founder Mark Zuckerberg turned 40 last month, celebrated its 20th anniversary this year.
The growth reflects the company’s efforts over the past few years to win back the attention of young people who flocked to the short-video app TikTok, owned by China’s ByteDance.
Meta has seen “five-quarters of healthy growth in app usage” among young people, according to a company spokesperson.
At an event in New York aimed at showing how young people are using the app, Facebook Meta chief Tom Allison said the anniversary had prompted executives to recognize that Facebook needed to evolve to remain relevant to the next generation.
“Who is Facebook for? For my parents? Alison said, citing questions he said he heard from young people.
Alison told Reuters in an interview that young users appeared to have originally gone to Facebook to use sections such as Marketplace, Groups and Dating at key points in their lives, such as when they first needed furnish the apartment.
While most of these sections are ad-free, using them significantly increases engagement, he added.
“Once they get on Facebook, they go and check out what’s going on in the Feed or on Reels,” he said, referring to Meta’s TikTok-like short-form video product.
Founded in a Harvard University dorm in 2004, Facebook spread like wildfire across American college campuses after its launch and quickly became the primary mass communications platform for a generation of Internet users. The app attracted 50 million users in its first three years and now has 3.2 billion users worldwide.
Over time, however, it has become less attractive to younger users, who are driven by consumer fads and who are considered critical by advertisers responsible for most of Meta’s ad sales.
Only about a third of U.S. teens say they use Facebook, a sharp decline from previous surveys the group conducted in 2014 and 2015, according to a survey last year by the Pew Research Organization.
By comparison, the share of all American adults who say they use Facebook has remained relatively unchanged since 2016, at about 68%, Pew reports.