Instagram Downloads Decline as TikTok Takes Youth Audience by Storm

Facebook and Instagram App Downloads Are Declining

The best-kept secret in Silicon Valley

Nothing lasts forever, not even our addiction to Facebook.

As new companies capture mindshare like ByteDance, and long-form video like on YouTube and better streaming content coming in November with Disney and others, that’s less time we’ll be spending on Facebook’s family of apps.

There’s actually some recent data to back this up, that the decline has already started.

With the Cambridge Analytica scandal, millions of users in Europe alone left Facebook in 2018.

Now in 2019, Mobile app downloads of Facebook are down 15% year over year in the third quarter of 2019, a Bank of America analysis finds.

Combined downloads of Facebook and Instagram are down 13% year over year and tracking down 3% compared to last quarter.

Other social media apps are not facing the same slump as Facebook’s apps so far in the quarter, according to the report. In fact advertising on Amazon, Twitter, Pinterest, and Snapchat are all increasing at a good clip.

As I write this I’m currently watching The Great Hack, a documentary on Netflix about Facebook. Needly to say, it doesn’t paint Facebook is a great light.

In Asia in 2019, TikTok has gone viral to the detriment of Instagram. TikTok is seen as more fun and silly with 15-second videos that make Instagram look dull and boring.

The download numbers, based on SensorTower data, are tracking down 3% in the third quarter of 2019 compared with last quarter, the analysts wrote.

Instagram downloads fared slightly better than Facebook’s, down 9% year over year versus 15% so far in the third quarter. Instagram numbers are still tracking down more than during the same time during the third quarter in 2018, according to the report.

What we are likely witnessing is Instagram reaching a saturation point, even as Facebook is mostly for those over 45. Younger Millennials might be on Instagram but are unlikely to be active still on Facebook. As for Gen Z, they are more likely to be on Snapchat and TikTok, than spending equal amounts of time on Instagram.

Mobile app downloads of the Facebook-owned app were down just 4% year over year at the time. Compared with last quarter, Instagram app downloads are tracking up 4%, BofA analysts wrote.

This doesn’t sound like a lot, but once things head south, they rarely ever bounce back. Facebook has been treading this sort of data for years.

Download numbers for Facebook’s mobile app are tracking down 8% quarter over quarter, the analysts wrote. Facebook’s data harvesting and privacy invasion does leave a dirty taste in our mouths, even as we try to change our names online to anonymous IDs, as if Facebook doesn’t have 5,000 data points on all of us with the ability to predict our desires in such an uncanny way we think Facebook is listening to us via our microphones.

Facebook can predict what people want in terms of Ads, but they couldn’t predict how their empire would fall. Google and Facebook have made so much with digital advertising with so little regulation, Silicon Valley has stretched the kind of abuses of power even made possible by the internet’s invention.

Although the report did not identify why Facebook and Instagram downloads are declining, Facebook has faced consumer backlash following the Cambridge Analytica scandal that revealed user data obtained without explicit consent, among many other nefarious activities. It’s hard to leave a utility as massive as Facebook that’s viewed as a part of our digital identity in the way we consume information.

Leaving WhatsApp can be impractical. Quitting cold turkey on Instagram saves us an enormous amount of time. Facebook scaling into a chat company based on privacy seems morbidly sarcastic to most of us.

For those of us who grew up on Facebook, certainly we are older now with real careers and families, we don’t have time or data to give to Facebook, we already gave way too much. Social Media became more about data and ads and less about us or what we needed as consumers.

Other social media apps are not facing the same slump as Facebook’s apps so far in the quarter, according to the report. Twitter, Snap and Pinterest all saw increased downloads so far in the third quarter of 2019, the analysts wrote.

I guess it just begs the question, how could such a bad actor on the internet like Facebook dominate for so long?

Mark Zuckerberg has been on a selling spree in August, unloading nearly 1.6 million shares of Facebook worth nearly $296 million. You don’t say? I guess Facebook’s stock might be in for a drop.

Some worrying news for Facebook came out on Sept. 9, 2019, as reports are emerging that downloads of both Facebook and Instagram have fallen in 2019. But we shouldn’t be worried about Mark Zuckerberg. He has a monopoly in the boardroom and shareholders are powerless. Even if they wanted to fire him, they couldn’t.

He’s been dodging shareholders and congress and the media has been dark about Facebook for a very long time. What happens when you move fast and break things and scale a huge platform like Facebook? You create a precedent of surveillance so significant, our digital lives now govern us, instead of the other way around.

The Facebook CEO has sold nearly 2.9 million shares of the tech company worth more than $526 million for all of 2019. That’s the worst possible sign for Facebook that we have, way worse than a decline in app downloads. Facebook has been dying for quite some time, Wall Street just hasn’t seen the writing on the wall. Breaking news is hard to accept for such a digital advertising cash cow.