Meta: Facebook is for the children, basically
Meta has a youth problem that it keeps trying to fix using old stuff. This time, it’s trying to bring back “pokes” — a feature from yesteryear the social media company had buried that allows users to digitally nudge others without having to say anything.
To make the feature shiny and new, the company is adding “counts” along with a dedicated poke button and page, so users can keep track of who they poked or were poked by and how much.
Meta is hoping the updated feature will lead to more usage from young people, who’ve already started to adopt the practice thanks to previous pushes from Meta. Other social media companies, like Snapchat and TikTok, have previously gotten into hot water before over similar gamification elements like “streaks” that critics have said are addictive.
The average age of Facebook users has been ticking up for years as the company loses young people to newer services, including Instagram, which Meta bought more than a decade ago, back when it was still called Facebook. According to the latest data from Pew Research Center, released last winter, teens were way less inclined to use Facebook than TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat.
Meta is hoping the updated feature will lead to more usage from young people, who’ve already started to adopt the practice thanks to previous pushes from Meta. Other social media companies, like Snapchat and TikTok, have previously gotten into hot water before over similar gamification elements like “streaks” that critics have said are addictive.
The average age of Facebook users has been ticking up for years as the company loses young people to newer services, including Instagram, which Meta bought more than a decade ago, back when it was still called Facebook. According to the latest data from Pew Research Center, released last winter, teens were way less inclined to use Facebook than TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat.
