Instagram was probably the last time Facebook could have gotten away with that sort of thing in the North American and European markets. I’m being cautious to only include those markets because I’m not familiar with the regulatory environment elsewhere.
I really can't imagine any situation where a younger gen z kid finds anything Facebook owns cool. I think their window has closed, and as the parent comment says, Facebook can't do it anymore simply because they're Facebook.
Really? Things must be different now, I remember Instagram being the most popular social media platform at my high school.
I might be basing too much on a few anecdotes, but it seems Instagram is heading the way of Facebook in terms of generational "coolness." I suspect it's just starting to hit a wall similar to Facebook did. TikTok is eating all of it.
My impression of the younger Gen Z is that they don't really care about internet optics. For better/worse, many of them developed motor skills after they learned how to use YouTube, and it's not uncommon to find them using the sketchiest of ad-infested websites just to watch Johnny Bravo. If Millennials are characterized as narcissists empowered by technology, Gen Z is a wave of rats trained to check off the Terms and Conditions box for their cheese. In large part, this is Microsoft and Apple's fault for designing computers so simple that a baby can use them. In Frank Herbert's prescient words, "Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them."
All of this is to say, I think the average 14 year old would be equally excited to unbox an Oculus Quest and an iPhone. Even if they're largely different devices (even different price points), they're probably not concerning themselves with the ethical implications of owning a VR headset. Most of them will probably Google how to sideload Pavlov or VRChat on it within 15 minutes of turning it on. That's just my $0.02 though, perhaps things are different outside of the northeastern US.
I don't think this is necessarily true. All of these social media companies serve different purposes with a focus on different types of content. When a new content format appears, users will flock there until they either get bored or a competitor iterates on that format and provides a better experience.
The first era of mainstream social media was really kicked off by Myspace, which was overtaken by FB only a few years later. Though, I think attempting to draw parallels from that era to today is foolish. Myspace gave users way too much control which made their site completely unusable. The app was also just flat-out broken in many places. They drove their own users away. There also was no young vs old divide there, in fact, the average age of FB was probably higher than Myspace.
Instagram threatened Facebook with their focus on "good" photography taken in the moment, tagged to specific locations. Facebook quickly acquired them but both apps continued growing and retained much of the same user base for a long while.
Snapchat launched after Instagram and there were similar talks of them killing Instagram, but then Instagram launched the same functionality and overtook Snapchat, bringing many of those younger users into their network.
Now we are seeing the rise of TikTok with their top-notch recommendation algos and short-form video content. In this case, I think Instagram moved too slowly in cloning TikTok's experience/content, but it's still too early to tell what will happen.
As another example, take a look at Reddit. It's been on a steady rise since its inception. There was Digg at the beginning, but again, they (like Myspace) were responsible for their own demise. It was not a cultural battle between the young vs old. Reddit has maintained their existing demographic, while consistently keeping the younger generation engaged. In Reddit's case, they are the best aggregators of content so that's where people go.
My point is that this idea that younger users just want to use a different social network to define themselves or get away from the older generations doesn't prove out in the records. It comes down to different experiences that facilitate different types of content. If the existing players are able to improve on that experience that results in the same (or better) level of content, they can steal those users back (or in the case of Reddit, achieve such dominance that nobody comes even close).
20-year increments feel right.
No one wants to engage with the same cultural artifacts of their parents or the previous generation. They want to establish themselves as a distinct cultural era and need symbols, etc that are distinct.