JAKARTA - Meta, the company behind the Facebook app, announced that its main app is attracting the highest number of young adult users in the last three years, in a bid to change the platform's reputation as an older generation fort.
More than 40 million adults aged 18 to 29 in the US and Canada are now using Facebook every day, the social media company said, in its first release of such demographic information. Facebook, whose founder Mark Zuckerberg turned 40 last month, marks his 20th birthday this year.
The growth reflects the company's efforts in recent years to grab the attention of young adults who have flocked to the short video app TikTok, owned by ByteDance from China.
"Meta recorded a "five-quarter growth in the use of healthy applications" among young adults," a company spokesperson said.
At an event in New York aimed at highlighting how young people use the app, Meta Facebook Chief Tom Alison said the birthday prompted executives to realize that Facebook needs to change to remain relevant to the next generation.
"Who is Facebook for? Is that for my parents?" said Alison, citing a question she said she had heard from young adults.
Alison told Reuters in an interview that young users seemed to come to Facebook initially to use parts like Marketplace, Group, and Dating on important moments in their lives, such as when they needed to complete the apartment for the first time.
"Although most of these parts do not display ads, their use encourages broad involvement," he added.
"When they were on Facebook, they then looked around things that were happening in the Feed or from Reels," he said, referring to Meta's short TikTok-like video product.
Facebook, founded in Harvard University dormitories in 2004, spread rapidly across various campuses in the US after it was launched and quickly became a default mass communication platform for internet user generation. The app garnered 50 million users in its first three years and now has 3.2 billion users globally.
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However, along the way, the platform has become less attractive for young users who influence consumer trends and is considered important by advertisers responsible for most of Meta's advertising sales.
Only about a third of US teens said they used Facebook, according to a survey last year by research organization Pew, a sharp decline compared to previous surveys conducted by the group in 2014 and 2015.
By comparison, part of all US adults who say they are using Facebook has remained relatively flat since 2016 at around 68%.
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