Social Media Platforms: Facebook (part 1)
In recent weeks we’ve discussed social media trends and takeaways of 2025. Now it’s time to analyze specific social apps to understand how teams can optimize each platform in the new year. Before we look at Facebook's algorithm updates (part 2), we need to understand the platform's use, age and gender demographics, top locations, and time spent on the app.
?Grab your caffeine, put on your comfy clothes, and let's dive in.
For many businesses, Facebook (Meta) was a brand's first experience in creating a company page on a true social media app. It was also one of the first social platforms to offer paid, targeted advertising that proved incredibly successful. The logo is blue, which we know from our color psychology analysis means the brand wants to be seen as reliable, safe, and trustworthy – especially as it relates to data protection. Note: Marketers - if you haven't seen The Great Hack on Netflix, I highly recommend. This documentary shows a real world example of just how "safe" data is on social media apps. Spoiler alert: Consumer data with Meta is just as "risky" as it is with TikTok.
Many large, mostly global companies and b2b brands have recently determined Facebook doesn’t align with their audience and doesn't provide an ROI. However, many small and local businesses see a significant amount of their social engagement coming from the platform and see a large ROI from ads. Facebook is known as a personal platform, initially started to keep up with family and friends. The purpose behind why audiences “get on” Facebook is vastly different than say a professional platform like LinkedIn.
Facebook has over 3 billion active monthly users globally, with around 5% being considered fake accounts. To understand exactly who is using Facebook, let's look at user age and gender charts broken down by Statista.
Facebook: User Age
Millennials (ages 25-34) make up the largest audience share of Facebook users at roughly 32%. Gen Z (ages 18-24) make up the second largest Facebook audience with around 23%.
Facebook: User Gender (Identified upon sign up)
Data from Statista shows that 56.8% of global Instagram users are male identifying, 43.2% are female identifying.
While the global gender demographics show that most users identify male, the United States gender demographics show the opposite. 53.8% of United States users identify female and 46.2% identify male.
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Facebook: User Location
?Top ?5 Countries (according to Statista as of April 2024)
1. India: 378.05
2. United States: 193.8 mil.
3. Indonesia: 119.05 mil.
4. Brazil: 112.55 ?mil.
5. Mexico: 92.7 mil.
Facebook: Time Spent
According to data provided by Backlinko sourced from emarketer and DataReportal, users in the United States ages 45+ spend the most time on Facebook daily. Let's look at the average time spent on Facebook in 2023 broken down by audience age of U.S. users.
While the data is not complete for 2024 usage, data provided by Backlinko indicates that in 2023 Facebook saw the least amount of daily usage among other major social media apps (TikTok saw the most daily usage in 2023).
Now that we understand more about the psychology behind Facebook's logo, platform usage, and audience demographics we can analyze the algorithm and updates set for 2025.
Talk next week!