Speaker A
Facebook stock price has fallen by over 50% in only seven months. What's going on? Well, let's begin by looking at the day on which this price decline began: the second of February 2022, when the parent company of Facebook and Instagram lost 230 billion dollars of value in less than 24 hours. Just to give you an idea about how much money 230 billion dollars is, the total GDP of New Zealand, being the value of every single product or service produced by the entire country for the whole year, was only 210 billion, which is less than what Facebook lost in a day. So, what went wrong on this fateful day in February when Meta set the record for the highest one-day value decline in stock market history? To put it simply, this was the day on which Facebook revealed to the public that both their site usage and revenue had been declining. Shown on screen is a graph displaying the amount of daily active Facebook users over the last 10 years. For every quarter besides the first three months of the pandemic, growth in the Facebook user base was almost strangely consistent. However, if we take a look at late 2021, for the first time in the website's history, user growth flattened off substantially. When looking at the graph for monthly Facebook users as opposed to daily Facebook users, the data is similar: only 0.1% growth from October to January, 0.8% from January to April, and then even a decline of 0.07% from April to July. Surprisingly, or perhaps unsurprisingly, Instagram follows a similar trend to Facebook: nothing but growth from 2015 until 2021, at which point stagnation hits. Why? Well, the first reason behind Facebook and Instagram's user growth stagnation is somewhat of an impressive problem: they're battling with human population limits and have run out of new countries to expand into. Of the 8 billion people on Earth, 3 billion log into Facebook at least once a month, leaving 5 billion people that don't use the service regularly. Of these 5 billion remaining, 1.7 billion live in countries such as China, Iran, and Russia, where Facebook and Instagram have been banned by the government, leaving only 3.3 billion who aren't using the service. According to an article written by The New York Times, another 3 billion do not use the internet at home or on their phones, and in some of the world's most populated countries, including Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Nigeria, a majority of people are not online. If you then factor in another 15% of the global population who are under the age of 10, making them too young to use social media at all, then pile on the hordes of people who have made a deliberate effort to boycott social media altogether, Facebook and Instagram's problem becomes obvious: they're running out of humans. In an article written by Time titled "Inside Facebook's Plan to Wire the World," it explains how Zuckerberg is working to literally provide the entire third world with the internet because it's now the only way that Meta can reach new people. Connecting the entire world wouldn't actually literally be possible unless everybody in the world were on the internet, so Zuckerberg has decided to make sure everybody is. This sounds like the kind of thing you say you're gonna do but never actually do, but Zuckerberg is doing it. He is in Chandori today on a campaign to make sure that actually literally every single human being on Earth has an internet connection. "We really want to get the next billion people online, and if we can play a role, then that's something that I personally care a lot about." Is it selfish for Zuckerberg to connect the entire world to the internet just so he can get more people onto Facebook and Instagram, or is it a win-win situation for everyone? That's an ethical conundrum for you to consider. However, this might not even be the main problem, as Meta isn't only running out of new people to introduce the services to, but those who are currently active on the services are departing in droves. Somewhat hilariously, Facebook has lost 1 or 30 million of its users to that pesky little thing known as death, and with 12.1% of Facebook's user base being over the age of 55, this number will inevitably increase as time progresses. Yet Facebook should probably be less worried about the boomers and a little more concerned about the zoomers, as Facebook's biggest loss in user count stems from the younger generation. Back in 2018, Facebook demographics began to follow a very interesting trend: there was an increase in users from the older generation, little change from those in their middle age, and a pretty substantial loss in users from those under the age of 25. One year later, in 2019, another piece of data was published supporting a similar trend, only to a more severe degree: there was a slight increase from the oldies, barely any change for the middle-age crowd, and again a massive 17% decline in only two years for those using Facebook under the age of 34. After seeing this data, it's no surprise that Facebook has also earned the title of social media's retirement home. It's definitely developed a reputation as a platform mainly used by the older generation. The problem with this is that the younger generation wants to use whichever social media app their friends are on, as opposed to the app that their grandma is on. This might also account for why it's become such a trend for young people to hate on Facebook. "Who the hell uses Facebook anymore?" is without a doubt something you've heard from a friend or your favorite large influencer, and it seems as though this attitude is doing serious damage to the platform. As when looking at the most recent data for how many youngsters are using the platform in 2022, the numbers begin to get scary. When U.S. teens were surveyed in 2014 to 2015, 71% said that they used Facebook at all. However, over the last seven years, this number has more than halved to only 32% recently, representing the biggest decline out of any social media platform. And when looking a little closer at the graph displayed on screen, the reason becomes pretty damn obvious: competition. Teens just don't find value in Facebook anymore. There are now well over five strongly positioned social media platforms to endlessly scroll through, and it isn't sustainable for our minds to compartmentalize nor prioritize our relationship with all of them. For the sake of time and sanity, people have to eliminate platforms that begin to lack a value-add incentive. Facebook, which teens often associate with their parents, has little to offer Gen Z. Zuckerberg himself even echoed this sentiment when Meta stock price began to decline seven months ago. He stated that they were facing unprecedented levels of competition and that people have a lot of choices for how they want to spend their time, and apps like TikTok are growing very quickly. Going back to the data, we can see that the Gen Z big four social media platforms are: Snapchat at number four, Instagram at number three, TikTok at number two, and YouTube way out in front with over 95% of U.S. teens using it. When examining each of these big four platforms, the value they add or the edge that they have is obvious: YouTube long-form video, TikTok short-form video, Instagram images and photography, Snapchat photo messaging. Even Twitter has a discernible edge as a platform for those who want to follow politics and the celebrity world. However, when looking at Facebook, the value it adds or the edge that it has isn't all that obvious. The general vibe that Facebook gives is that it's a watered-down, weaker version of the four most popular apps combined, and it's diversified to the point where rather than being strong in one area, it's just kind of weak in all areas. When Facebook stock price began to decline seven months ago, Zuckerberg announced that their focus was going to be on short-form video, but it's obvious that the Facebook algorithm is poor in comparison to YouTube and TikTok. And what's the point in going on Facebook to see your friends' photos when they're posted to Instagram anyway? Facebook definitely has a bi-
