Are People Moving Away from Facebook?

Whether you’re a proponent of social media platforms or prefer to keep your identity private online, you’ve no doubt heard of Facebook and its meteoric growth in the early 2000s. Facebook, now owned by a parent company Meta (under the same CEO and board of directors) has experienced a shrinking in its userbase for the first time since its inception in 2004.

Facebook’s userbase has shrunk from 1,930 billion to 1,929 billion users in Q4 of 2021, leading many to speculate that the days of the once-leading social media platform are numbered. What has caused it to lose its popularity over the years, and what other alternatives are people seeking out as they abandon the proverbial ship, leaving Facebook for good?

The Origins of Facebook

To understand the current issues Mark Zuckerberg’s company is facing, we need to take a look back at what made the then “The Facebook” popular in the first place. The platform was first launched in the February of 2004 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Its user base of 1,200 college students and campus staff snowballed into more than a million active users by the end of 2004, propelling the young CEOs company into the stratosphere.

By the end of 2005, the platform had over 6 million active users, prompting its CEO to think big and start prospecting for potential angel investors who’d help him develop the platform further. The idea behind “The Face Book”, later rebranded as simply “Facebook”, was simple. Create a personal profile, attach your profile image, and post status updates to let people know what you’re up to.

Since we’ve all wanted an easy and accessible way of staying in touch with friends and family, creating an account on Zuckerberg’s platform was only logical. Likewise, the platform found its way into the media limelight around the globe very quickly and it was starting to get difficult to ignore.

Facebook passed the 1 billion active users milestone in 2012 and the platform was poised for an even more successful rise. With smartphones now being able to run it, as well as its subsidiary platforms Instagram and WhatsApp, and allow on-the-go access to the platform, what could go wrong?

A combination of two external factors affected Facebook’s popularity – the first being raising concerns over data privacy by its users. Second, however, is the appearance of a much more Gen Z-friendly social media platform focused on multimedia content – TikTok.

The Looming Advertisers

One of the primary ways Facebook generated its revenue and thus became popular with brands around the world is an advertisement. Facebook enabled advertisers to target individual users based on their use patterns, search patterns, the content they interact with, and the types of content they share on their profiles.

While the logic behind the algorithm is far more complex, the platform has enabled advertisers to sell more products and services in exchange for monetary gain. This practice would boil over in the late 2010s when a company by the name of Cambridge Analytica would access and use the data of millions of Facebook users without their consent, mostly for political advertisement.

This has led to a series of US Senate hearings where Mark Zuckerberg had to publicly address this. However, the damage was already done and the public support and goodwill for it started to wain. It prompted many users to rethink their content sharing patterns on Facebook which they didn’t give a second thought to until then.

The TikTok-ing Time Bomb

TikTok is a social media platform that launched in 2016 in mainland China before going international in 2017. At its core, the platform is designed for smartphone use and focuses on short-form video content. Its value proposition is different than Facebook’s as it promises to target the needs of young Gen Z users far more than Facebook ever could with its early 2000s business model.

By early 2022, the app garnered over 1 billion global daily users, a rise that was in stark contrast to Facebook’s systematic, organic growth. As TikTok continued to rise to popularity, more and more people turned their heads away from Facebook in search of more exciting and engaging ways to interact with others online.

Given its Chinese roots, the platform also received backlash in the west, with unsubstantiated claims of illicit data privacy compromises – claims which were quickly addressed by TikTok reinventing its terms of use to continue operating without geo-restrictions.

So, how did Mark Zuckerberg respond in the wake of TikTok taking over as “the next big thing” in the social media market? By attempting to reinvent the proverbial wheel once more with the metaverse.

Enter the Metaverse

In October of 2021, Mark Zuckerberg announced that the company he created in 2004 would be rebranding into Meta. Meta, standing for “metaverse”, is to be a new step in the social media landscape evolution, offering its users the ability to interact with one another through AR, VR, and other technologies. The public reception to Zuckerberg’s presentation was not overwhelmingly positive as the company might have expected it to be.

Instead, many were taken aback by the mission statement presented during the public announcement, promoting a gradual disassociation from reality for Meta’s users as something exciting and revolutionary. While Meta is still in its inception and we won’t see the far-reaching consequences of Facebook’s rebranding for several years, it’s clear that the general userbase wasn’t thrilled by the notion of having to invest in Meta-branded VR hardware to access its titular “metaverse”.

With alternative social media platforms such as the aforementioned TikTok, and far more accessible chatting alternatives like Viber and Telegram, it’s no surprise that some users would abandon it entirely in search of proverbially greener pastures.

An Uncertain Future?

While Facebook’s user base did dwindle a bit in 2021, the reported numbers indicate that it was only a 0,05% decline. In the grand scheme of things, this is a minuscule number of users and it won’t lead to Facebook shutting down anytime soon.

However, it does mark a turning point in the social media landscape, with many high-quality competitors rising to the task of providing what yesterday’s giant cannot keep up with. What did we learn about Facebook and its decline in popularity?

• The platform shared user data with advertisers which most users deemed immoral
• The platform couldn’t keep up with the shifting user expectations in terms of functionality
• Platforms like TikTok have filled the gap left by Facebook and cater directly to young teens
• Facebook dropped in popularity and its active user base by an unsubstantial percentage (0,05%)

What’s the moral of Facebook’s story and how does it play to our social wellness? Achieving healthy social wellness is all about balancing all aspects of our social lives so that no person in our life suffers from it.

With Meta pushing us evermore toward a digital-only social life, it’s time to take a step back and rethink whether engaging in social media platforms so much is a good idea. Ultimately, we should strive to unplug more often and spend time with our friends, family, and loved ones in real-world situations instead of relegating those interactions to the digital landscape.