In 2018, As Instagram crossed one billion, active users, the CEO of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg called it a big deal. Instagram, which is also owned by Facebook, was said to be the best influence for the growth of social networks. Even if Instagram was praised by the CEO himself, the app was silently suffering through the decrease of adult users to other social media sites, which was said to be a bad influence in social media, according to a 2018 marketing presentation. The problem had become pretty intense by last year, according to internal Instagram data acquired by a report.
Even after being praised as one of Facebook’s most precious things, Instagram had to spend expensively to get the teenagers to turn around. It is mainly focused on the 13-15 years old age group who are probably in early high school.
Any wrong step by Instagram might cause consequences for Facebook. The social network assumed that Instagram would get the attention of young people to all of its features, to get back Facebook’s old user base, according to a report. The analytics indicate that Facebook has now stopped its aim to draw teenagers, the same as Instagram has worked to keep teenagers.
The publications show how risky it is for Facebook as it tries to talk about Instagram’s effects on the mental health of the users. According to additional reports from the Facebook analyzer, Haugen said that Facebook was aware that some adolescent females described bad feelings about their body image while using Instagram. At a meeting earlier this month, Haugen said that Facebook had made few users stay, despite knowing the issues, especially minors, to stay on its services.
Instagram’s concerns over losing young users mark how highly they are valued by the internet and how important their attention can be, even for a growing service. Instagram, which was obtained by Facebook in 2012, is less than 12 years old. It has a lot of influence among adolescents, but rivals like TikTok, the video app, and Snapchat, the messaging app, are hard to compete with.
According to company figures, Instagram has more than 1.3 billion users, with TikTok having 1 billion and Snapchat having 500 million. However, according to a poll carried this year by the financial services company, 35% of teens declared Snapchat was their favorite social media site, while 30% chose TikTok. Instagram has the least of them which is 22%.
Facebook, which was founded by college students, was always dependent on young users. Users must be at least 13 years old to use it legally. The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 forbids storing or collecting personal information for anybody under the age of 13 as against the law.
In 2013, David Ebersman, Facebook’s then-chief financial officer had warned during a conference that the company’s daily users were diminishing, especially among youngsters. After Facebook’s stock price fell due to the revealing by Ebersman, Sheryl Sandberg, the company’s chief operating officer, stated that the reaction to Ebersman’s statement had been overstated.
That same year, Zuckerberg attempted and failed to obtain Snapchat to increase Facebook’s interest among young people. As a result, the company started to grab youngsters with its pre-owned apps, such as Instagram, according to a report. Instagram copied an important Snapchat feature known as Stories back in 2016, which allows individuals to capture clips and images and share them as 24-hour temporary status updates.
