Facebook and Instagram: Meta's social networks officially in decline

According to the Wall Street Journal, Instagram usage has dropped dramatically in recent months. The reason for this is that the network, which tends to follow the TikTok model as closely as possible, offers its users Instagram content published by people they don't follow. And while this trend may delight some, the majority of the network's users say they're tired of this lack of control over their own news feed.

Despite the positive impact of reels on visibility, users are turning away from Instagram to TikTok. In fact, TikTokers spend 10 times more time consuming content on the platform than on Instagram. According to an internal report leaked on the Internet, reel engagement has dropped by 13.6% in recent months. Although this data should be taken with a grain of salt due to its plausible lack of authenticity, Méta did not refute these figures. Its only response was that the report did not reflect the full picture. In short, a rather vague answer.

This lack of communication about the reality of the growth of its social networks is a relatively surprising fact on Méta's part. In 2016, Méta announced in one of its performance reports that its web users spent an average of 50 minutes a day using its social networks. Since then, however, no official statistics have been released on the subject of consumption time. This suggests a steady decline in the use of the Group's social networks.

Facebook and Instagram: a steady decline in monthly activity
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Despite the lack of transparency on annual activity data. Méta shares with us a slowdown in the growth of its subscriber base on the Facebook network. The reason given in their report: an uncertain economic context. Nevertheless, Facebook has 1.97 billion users on the network, slightly more than last quarter. This is due to an increase in usage in India and Indonesia. By contrast, Facebook is experiencing a drastic decline in usage in Europe.

This decline is partly due to the Russia-Ukraine conflict, with Facebook having lost 2 million active monthly users in recent months. Considering that the network has 70 million Russian users, this significant drop remains relatively limited.

While it may be premature at the moment to say that Meta is in decline, the change in the way Internet users consume content leads us to believe that TikTok will soon be the number 1 social network on the market.

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