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On Monday, the public took a glance at Mark Zuckerberg’s fears that Facebook might shrink and become trivial.

In a conference call to discuss Facebook’s financial results, Zuckerberg said he plans to overhaul the company to make its apps more attractive to people under 30. number of old people,” he said. said. He said it would take years to make that change.

Many organizations are obsessed with sticking with the young and the cool, so this statement was perhaps not a surprise. And Zuckerberg, who always looks worried Something, He has a habit of making bold statements about Facebook’s priorities that are sometimes getting more talked about.

The truth is, Facebook has been losing popularity among young people for years, but that doesn’t matter much. The company was attracting more users overall and making a lot of money. It was adapted to appeal to younger people, including by buying Instagram nine years ago and copying features from Snapchat and TikTok.

Zuckerberg’s comment and latest news by my colleagues and other journalists, recommend it maybe this time it’s different. Fear seems to lurk inside Facebook, including Zuckerberg’s corner office, that the social media giant needs to reverse itself with an implied “or else” to lure young people.

Zuckerberg knows very well that dominant companies in tech don’t tend to stay that way for long. The change he outlines raises the question: Does Zuckerberg worry that teen apathy will fulfill tech watchers’ long-held guess that the company is destined to become one?

Let’s see what will happen. Facebook can overcome this challenge again and win the hearts of young people. (Add the meme, “how are you guys?)

Facebook executives on Monday revealed no grand plans to win back the youth. they talked vaguely about more emphasis on reelsOn Instagram’s riff on TikTok and Zuckerberg’s latest obsession with virtual reality and the “metaverse”.

A tiny bit of my brain wonders how Zuckerberg’s horror glare on Monday was intended to portray Facebook as a reclusive weakling rather than an invincible internet star as its critics say. As my colleague Kevin Roose wrote, Facebook both a dominant power and worried about its future.

No matter how much the company cares about young people using Instagram, Facebook and other products, it can stay rich without them for too long.

The most important factor in Facebook’s financial success is that it collects a lot of information about what people (mostly us in the United States and other wealthy countries) do online, and then uses that data to help businesses sell their pajamas to us more effectively. cabinets or applications. Teenagers may run off in droves, and Facebook will continue to make that ad money, at least for quite some time. Seriously, as we saw from Monday’s earnings release, Facebook is very good at making money.

But the company’s internal discussions of younger people could become one of the most important works in Facebook communications and communications. Documents collected by Frances Haugen, a former Facebook product manager.

report on these documents and other company discussions show that Facebook is concerned about this. Teens spend less time on Instagram this year its user base is aging fast, and young people who love Instagram Unattractive to the Facebook app as you get older.

But it’s one thing to see concern in private negotiations between subordinates or in a marketing document. Zuckerberg’s sounding the alarm in public is another dimension.

Further reading on Facebook Papers:

How to fix Facebook according to its employees — wired

Facebook disappointed the world – Atlantic Ocean

Facebook Documents reveal surprising failures in the Global South – rest of the world

Facebook grapples with the features it uses to define social networks – New York Times