Recently, some documents were leaked by a former Facebook
staff member Frances Haugen in Facebook Files expose, which revealed a major insight
on how there has been a contraction of the user base on Facebook. Facebook has
concealed the extent to which content production per user has been in long term
decline, since 2012/2013 to be exact.
An internal research stats report was also attached in the
leaked documents. The findings, however, are not as surprising as it has been
apparently evident that especially teens and young adults have reduced usage of
the platform for quite a few years.
In fact, the decline in Facebook’s usage is the reason why
the social media company decided to launch Instagram back in 2012, to continue
building a connection with its younger users.
The strategy was a success, as Instagram managed to attract a billion users under Facebook’s ownership. Things, however, took a difficult turn for Facebook once again after a popular new social app “TikTok” made its way to the social media world and soon began to steal Instagram’s spotlight by immediately creating a giant youth user base for itself.
Haugen further claimed in the leaked documents that “for years,
Facebook has misrepresented core metrics to investors and advertisers including
the amount of content produced on its platforms and the growth in individual
users.”
It has therefore been confirmed that Facebook chooses to
share only certain information with the public, the one that it wants to share.
For this reason, it is difficult to accurately speculate the platform’s statistics.
Moreover, Facebook never provided an Instagram-specific update in the past
three years.
These findings do not, in any way, suggest that the game for
Facebook is about to be over. Currently, the company is collecting more than
$100 billion in revenue and is also continuing to expand into new regions around
the globe. Moreover, its investment in VR and AR technologies is helping it
maintain its relevance.
