Facebook’s Declining Young Adult Market
June 17, 2021Facebook has experienced generally slowed growth recently, and one primary reason for this has to do with the way it’s losing appeal among teens and young adults. Per research from eMarketer, young users are regularly moving from Facebook to other social media outlets – and this could have a profound effect on online marketing efforts.
What are the numbers behind these changes, and what are the other sites teens are migrating to? Let’s look at those details plus a few other highlights from the data.
Basic Declines
For the second consecutive year, teens and young adults have shown expected usage declines on Facebook. These groups are vital for advertisers, making this a real problem for Facebook.
Teens and tweens who were already on Facebook generally remain there, but have become less engaged – they log in less often, and they spend less average time on the platform than they used to. Many are even skipping Facebook entirely, a term researchers call “Facebook nevers.”
Alternatives
Facebook does have one big silver lining here: It also owns one of the two primary alternatives that many teens and tweens are flocking to. Instagram is one of two major sites drawing much of this new traffic, with the other being Snapchat.
Facebook still isn’t out of the woods, however. Snapchat is growing at a much quicker rate, and is projected to overtake Instagram and Facebook in the total teen and young adult ages (spanning ages 12 to 24) for the first time in 2017. Snapchat is projected to boost its share of social network users to over 40 percent this year, and to push close to a majority by 2021.
Other Highlights
Here are some other highlights from EMarketer’s forecast:
- Facebook use in the US among teens age 12 to 17 will fall 3.4 percent from 2016.
- Facebook’s monthly users are expected to grow 2.4 percent, up slightly on a prior poor forecast.
- Snapchat’s monthly US users are expected to grow by over 25 percent in 2017.
- Instagram’s monthly users are expected to grow by 23.8 percent in 2017.
- Increases for Facebook and Instagram in the UK remain reasonable, but Facebook is losing shares to both Instagram and Snapchat.
To learn more about Facebook’s trends with young adults, or to find out about our SEO services and more, contact the experts at SEO Werkz.
