(MENAFN- AzerNews) Meta (META.O) said on Friday its flagship app facebook isattracting its highest number of young adults in three years, as ittries to shake the platform's reputation as the bastion of an oldergeneration, Azernews reports citing Reuters.
More than 40 million U.S. and Canadian adults aged 18 to 29 nowcheck facebook daily, the social media company said, in itsfirst-ever release of such demographic information. Facebook, whosefounder Mark Zuckerberg turned 40 last month, marked its 20thanniversary this year.
The growth reflects the company's efforts in the last few yearsto recapture the attention of young adults who have been flockingto short video app TikTok, owned by China's ByteDance.
Meta charted "five quarters of healthy app usage growth" amongyoung adults, a company spokesperson said.
At an event in New York aimed at highlighting how young peopleuse the app, Meta's head of Facebook Tom Alison said theanniversary prompted executives to realize Facebook needed toevolve to stay relevant for the next generation.
"Who is Facebook for? Is it for my parents?" Alison said, citingquestions he said he had heard from young adults.
Alison told Reuters in an interview that young users appeared tobe coming to Facebook initially to use sections like Marketplace,Groups and Dating at key moments in their lives, such as when theyneeded to furnish apartments for the first time.
While most of those sections do not feature ads, their usage wasdriving engagement broadly, he added.
"Once they're on Facebook, they go and they check out stuffthat's going on in Feed or from Reels," he said, referring toMeta's TikTok-like short video product.
Facebook, founded in a Harvard University dorm in 2004, spreadlike wildfire across U.S. college campuses after it launched andquickly became the default mass communications platform for ageneration of internet users. The app amassed 50 million userswithin its first three years and now has 3.2 billion usersglobally.
Along the way, however, it became less attractive to the youngusers who drive consumer fads and are considered crucial by theadvertisers responsible for most of Meta's ad sales.
Only about a third of U.S. teens say they use Facebook,according to a survey last year by research organization Pew, asharp drop compared to previous surveys the group conducted in 2014and 2015.
By comparison, the share of all U.S. adults who say they useFacebook has remained relatively flat since 2016 at around 68%, Pewhas said.
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