We’ve been hearing variations of the same story for years: “Facebook is no longer cool”, “people are leaving Facebook behind”, “teenagers are over Facebook”, and so on and so forth. And yet, the world’s largest social network continued to grow, adding nearly 600 million monthly active users over the past three years alone. Until now that is. According to its latest earnings release, Facebook’s user growth plateaued in the last three months of 2021, a first in the platform’s 18-year history.
In Q4 2021, Facebook had 2,912 monthly active users, practically unchanged from 2,910 in the previous quarter. The same trend was visible in the platform’s most engaged users, as the number of those logging in daily declined from 1,930 million in Q3 2021 to 1,929 million in the last three months of the year.
So have we officially reached “Peak Facebook”? For now it’s too early to tell, but if the trend continues in the next quarter, it would be an ominous sign, suggesting that all the surveys pointing towards declining Facebook usage may have had a point after all.
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