Facebook-owner Meta has been riding a rollercoaster of bad PR in recent years. Will it spell the end for the social media behemoth?

The rapid rise of TikTok has put Meta into panic mode. Frantically adding features and changing its feed to keep pace with TikTok’s short video platform. Keeping up might be easier said than done as over the years countless users have become reluctant with Meta’s products, Facebook and Instagram. 

While the latter might be in a stronger position, Facebook has seen a steady decline in recent years. The battered reputation of Facebook and its subsequent rebranding to Meta hasn’t done much in terms of user retention. Is the demise of Facebook inevitable or can the company turn the tides in its favor? 

Facebook usage declines

In a 2018 Pew survey among U.S. adults, the nonpartisan fact tank found that the majority of Americans used Facebook and YouTube, with younger adults who described themselves as heavy social media users favored Instagram and Snapchat. Facebook maintained a strong presence in target audiences in the United States and kept a strong margin amongst its competitors, the Pew Research Center noted. The usage of Facebook wasn’t exclusive to younger audiences, with the network having a firm presence amongst many demographics. 

In December 2023, Facebook’s situation couldn’t be more different, especially amongst teens. Teenagers trading platforms is one of the earliest indicators of changing social media landscape, serving as a warning sign for platforms to either re-engage the audience or acquire alternate platforms to keep them in the system. In another Pew survey conducted between September and October 2023, 1,453 teenagers in the U.S. gave their social media preferences, revealing a dramatic decline for Meta’s Facebook and Instagram.

In 2015, 71 percent of U.S. teens aged between 13 to 17 years old had used the Facebook app or visited the website. This number had fallen to a dramatic 33 percent in 2023. Instagram saw decreasing numbers as well, but had grown nonetheless over the same period, coming from 52 percent an growing to 59 percent. Interestingly enough, TikTok saw declining usage, coming from 67 percent in 2022 and experiencing a minor decrease to 63 percent a year later. In terms of Facebook usage, only 3 percent of teens indicated that they visited the platform almost constantly, with 8 percent about once a day. This is in stark contrast to YouTube, with 38 percent of teenagers visiting the website several times a day.   

Cambridge Analytica scandal

A critical part behind the distrust against Facebook, is the major scandal with data analytics firm Cambridge Analytica. An investigation from the New York Times, together with The Observer of London and The Guardian, received documents where campaign managers of the Trump presidential election campaign, including  Stephen K. Bannon, used data collected by Facebook to build voter profiles. The profiles in turn were used to create highly curated ads that could persuade voters to check Trump on the voting ballot. The revelations made would result in Facebook’s largest PR-disaster, haunting it to this day. 

The story started with Cambridge Analytica acquiring private Facebook user data that it could sell to those running political campaigns. Former Cambridge Analytica employees told the reports that records of over 50 million Facebook users had been collected. The company used an exploit within the platform to acquire personal details of platform users. An undercover video published by the British broadcaster Channel 4 News found the CEO of Cambridge Analytica, Alexander Nix, admitting to bribery and seduction of politicians to influence foreign elections.  

Collection of user data by third parties, including their networks, was made possible by Facebook’s Open Graph. In 2013, Cambridge Analytica saw the potential of Open Graph and launched the ‘thisisyourdigitallife’ app. This application prompts users to answer psychological questions. Facebook noticed how third parties were able to collect vast amounts of data easily and in 2014 it limited the access to user’s friends. Users had to grant permission first.  

The capabilities of Cambridge Analytica caught the interest of major political figures in the United States, including Ted Cruz, whose campaign team used large datasets to create a psychological profile to craft a better message. In 2016, Donald Trump invested large sums into Facebook Ads. The revelation of the extensive data collection practices sparked outrage with policymakers with Mark Zuckberg forced to go to the US Congress. 

Facebook users adjust

The revelations made by The Guardian and the New York Times in March 2018, sparked a wave of distrust with Facebook users, who in response changed their attitude towards the company’s handling of their personal data. A September 2018 Pew Research Survey, found that large subsections of Facebook’s user base were adjusting their behavior in regards to the platforms. The survey, which ran between May and June 2018, showed that 54 percent of Facebook users 18 and older adjusted their privacy settings in the last 12 months. Some users have taken more drastic measures, with 42 percent of respondents saying they took a break from the platform for multiple weeks, with 26 percent having deleted the Facebook app from their phone. Overall, 74 percent of Facebook users had taken action. 

The actions taken differed per age group. The survey found that younger Facebook users were more likely to adjust their privacy settings than their older counterparts. At least 44 percent of Facebook users aged 18 to 29 had deleted the app from their phone, compared to only 12 percent of users aged 65 and over. Older users were also less inclined to change the privacy settings. A follow up survey by the Pew Research Center conducted between September and October 2018, showed that while some users had taken action, the inner workings of Facebook still remained very much a mystery. 

The survey revealed that 74 percent of U.S. adult Facebook users didn’t know how Facebook keeps track of their interests and trades, with 27 percent of respondents saying the classification of Facebook content didn’t accurately represent them. A small majority (51 percent) of Facebook users weren’t comfortable with the data collection practices of the platform. Whether the effect of the Cambridge Analytics has waned over time is difficult to assess. Nonetheless it shook the very foundations of Facebook’s business model and at the time put a massive spotlight on operations at the social media giant. 

Instagram harms mental health

In September 2021, Facebook found itself in another PR-disaster when an internal research report surfaced about the negative mental health implications on teen girls using its picture and video sharing platform Instagram. The report followed a string of reports that were published by the Wall Street Journal and pressure from The Verge to demand Facebook to release documents that prove, or disprove, the company’s claims that its platforms deliver a net positive for the world and its users.

The documents revealed by The Wall Street Journal however painted the opposite picture. Facebook’s analysis revealed that 30 percent of Instagram users felt that the platform amplified their mental health issues. This was particularly present at the teen girl demographic, where 30 percent indicated that Instagram increased body dissatisfaction. The tragedy of body dissatisfaction and mental health deterioration, is that for many users, Instagram became a way to distract from problems in their personal lives. Which in turn further amplified distress as users had limited control over the content being served. 

The mental health impact of Instagram varied per user, with some problems standing out more than others. While Instagram was able to improve mental health for some of its users that were experiencing distress, a subsection of users saw their mental state deteriorate further, with 31.10 percent of respondents viewing the use of the platform as problematic. 22.70 percent of users felt worse due to social comparison, followed by 18.90 percent experiencing less appreciation for their own body. In 17.70 percent of the cases, Instagram led to sleep issues and for 14.70 percent of the respondents, it increased feelings of loneliness. 

In a statement, Karina Newton, Head of Public Policy at Instagram, commented that the company stood behind the findings, despite them casting a negative light on the platform and the revelations made by the Wall Street Journal were absent of the appropriate context. Newton highlighted that the internet has vastly increased the amount of information people consume, with society having to discover how to best handle all that is being served. Adding that research related to the impact of social media is still in its infancy, stating that more research needs to be done. 

Newton went to clarify that its research delivered mixed findings, noting that social media wasn’t inherently good nor bad for its users. Being helpful for one and bad for the other. She cited research conducted by Pew and Harvard, which highlighted that social media resulted in users becoming more connected. Hence, Instagram was a force for the better. However, Newton acknowledged that something had to be done for its users, with teams developing solutions to combat bullying, eating disorders and other mental health implications.

Meanwhile, the news related to the negative effects on its users, started to spread like wildfire, with the news reaching congress. Amy Houston at The Drum questioned whether this would have a ripple effect on advertisers, who might question their involvement with the platform. Houston opened by highlighting that this wasn’t the first time the role of social media on users’ well-being was being examined. 

Facebook’s battered reputation

The declining visitor numbers of Facebook were the result of a string of defining events that broke the trust in the platform amongst its users. From the data leak to Cambridge Analytica to the mental health implications of Instagram. These events kept eroding the foundations on which Facebook was built upon. Already back in 2017, a survey, in cooperation with Reticle Research and The Verge, showed the shifting attitudes toward Facebook, which eventually led to Mark Zuckberg haphazardly rebranding the company to Meta. 

The survey was conducted between September 28 and October 10, 2017, with 1,520 U.S. citizens giving their take on the digital landscape. The Verge found that respondents trusted Facebook less than Google. The reasons as to why Americans didn’t use Facebook varied greatly, but a majority of respondents (62.39 percent) said they didn’t want to share anything on the platform. This was followed by 58.97 percent saying they would rather share or communicate through other means. Another large segment, 57.26 percent of respondents, said they didn’t trust the platform, with 49.15 percent noting they felt Facebook was invading their privacy. In October 2021, Mark Zuckerg announced Facebook the now infamous rebranding to Meta. 

A month later, in a November 2021 piece at the Harvard Business Review, Denise Lee Yohn, commented that the rebranding of Facebook to Meta was a strategy to distract the public, drawing its attention away from the criticism the company had accumulated over the years. Yohn noted that the rebrand was launched without changing the internal mechanism within Facebook itself, something Meta themselves acknowledged in the press release. 

The change to Meta embodied the evolution of the Facebook platform, Zuckerberg explained. A brand befitting of the metaverse, one of Zuckerberg’s multibillion dollar obsessions. The metaverse would be a virtual world where users can interact with friends, family, work and everything between. All through a virtual experience. Teleporting in spaces beyond one’s wildest imaginations. Facebook’s vision sounds promising, but it’s a feat current technologies cannot create. 

Yohn highlighted that this vision might not be realized within the next decade, which made the rebranding irrelevant to the strategy the company had set out for itself. If Meta fails to deliver on this promise, it will only further degrade the brand and people’s trust in it. Communicating a brand is easy, Yohn notes. But actually changing the intern workings of a company is much harder. She added that while rebranding strategies might have worked in the past to deflect poor public perception. 

In today’s world, where information travels much faster, a new smack of paint won’t do much. A November 2021 survey from the Washington Post, in collaboration with The Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University, found that 72 percent of Americans indicated they didn’t trust or didn’t trust Facebook at all, when it came down to handling personal information and data collection of their internet activity. Only a meager 10 percent of respondents had a positive opinion on Facebook, with 33 percent being neutral in how they perceived the platform. Facebook photo sharing app Instagram didn’t fare much better, with 6 out of 10 respondents distrusting the platform. The survey was conducted shortly after the Meta rebrand, leaving much to be desired in terms of persuading public opinion.  

TikTok surprise

The problems at Facebook started to compound as TikTok started its rapid rise to fame. In an October 2022 interview with American technology analyst Ben Thompson, Mark Zuckberg explained that the rise of TikTok showed that the company had miscalculated how users wanted to interact with content. He said that before TikTok, users would follow their friends and consume their content, on which you would occasionally comment or interact with what your friends and family posted. 

With TikTok, instead of being locked into a fixed content funnel, discovering new and engaging content has become the norm. Users discover new content which they share with their friends and interact with it from there. This is a major shift in media consumption. Zuckerberg noted that not the creator, but the content itself becomes the metric of value. TikTok’s algorithm is fully tailored to serving the best content.

What constitutes the best content depends on locality and users preferences, Zuckerberg added. A user still wants to see updates from friends and family. But, in order to cater to the changing media consumption behaviors, the content feed will have to be adjusted, serving the most engaging content. Artificial intelligence will be vital in crafting the optimal feed, Zuckberberg noted. This tailored feed will result in social interactions in the form of messaging. This has spurred teams across Meta to cater to this need for message-based content interaction. 

Two years prior to the interview, Facebook’s answer to keep users engaged on Instagram was the launch of Reels. Short form video, allowing users to record and edit 15-second multiclip videos, with sounds and effects, that could be shared with followers in the Feed and discovered by users through the Explore tab. The timing of Reels wasn’t a coincidence, as TikTok was facing legal issues under the Trump Administration and facing a possible ban, which left a vacuum for Instagram to jump and prevent users from flocking to its main rival. Reels however did little to stop the exponential growth of TikTok. 

In August 2023, a report published by Business Insider found that US adults were spending more time on TikTok than on Instagram. The report found that users in the US spend a total of 4.43 billion minutes per day scrolling through TikTok in 2023, significantly higher than Instagram which clocked in at 3.91 billion minutes. Business Insider comments that the higher engagement time is remarkable as TikTok has less active users than Instagram, according to its own estimations. Insider Intelligence, affiliated with Business Insider and eMarketer, estimated that TikTok had 82.3 million US adults interacting with the platform per month, compared to Instagram’s 118.4 million. 

Despite the figures pointing toward TikTok surpassing Facebook by 2025 in terms of engagement time, Principal analyst at Insider Intelligence, Debra Aho Williamson, explained that advertisers are still favoring Meta’s advertising suite. TikTok is expanding its offering, such as shopping and performance-based advertising, but has yet to match Meta’s extensive library. As to whether Reels was able to tip the scale for Instagram to remain relevant with audiences, Williamson commented that the feature has been mostly eating away time from other services on Instagram. 

Reels hasn’t resulted in audiences spending more time on the platform, but in due time Williamson expects advertisers to add Reels to their inventory. However, it’s still lagging behind compared to TikTok. TikTok was able to remain relevant even with its strong surge in usage over the course of the pandemic, which was against predictions that once people would be able to go outside, time spent on the platforms would flatten off. Overall daily time spent on TikTok is expected to increase by 547 percent in 2023 compared to 2019. Despite Instagram usage not being able to surpass TikTok, the platform itself is expected to see time spent increase by 57 percent in 2023 compared to 2019. 

Uncertain future

Meta has been operating the leading social media platforms for several years. With its social platforms Facebook and Instagram, it reaches billions of people every month. But, its dominance has been shaken up in the last few years. The problems started with Cambridge Analytica, revealing to the world how user data was used to help politicians get elected. This promoted users to change their attitudes toward privacy, with some even removing the social media apps all together. 

This was followed by internal research documents showing how platforms like Instagram could negatively impact the mental health of its users. The news spread like wildfire, with Instagram’s PR-team working overtime to clarify that more research is necessary and its platform was a net positive to society. In a desperate attempt to prevent further spillover, Facebook announced it would rebrand itself to Meta. Whilst the company labeled it as a brand that would better represent the mission of the company, critics could easily spot desperation. The rise of TikTok put the already stressed company in overdrive, looking for avenues to keep users onboard. 

As bleak as the scenario looks, Meta is still generating billions upon billions of dollars in revenue. During the Cambridge Analytica fallout in 2018, Meta still generated $55.8 billion revenue and the following years saw revenue increase further to $70.6 billion. It will take more to dethrone the master of social media.