Facebook wanted to target the "untapped" tween audience while on playdates to add younger users to Facebook. This is according to more documents that have been acquired by the Wall Street Journal since breaking news that Facebook knew that Instagram was a problem for teen girls' mental health. As such, the social media giant was working with its development team to determine if there was a way to make their social media platform more inviting to tweens who, according to researchers, appear to have more of an interest in being on TikTok or Snapchat, according to Newsweek.
The documents showed that when it came to the teenage audience, "Global teen penetration on FB is low, and acquisition appears to be slowing down," according to the Wall Street Journal. Not wanting the same to happen with the tween population and be left behind other social media platforms, Facebook wondered if there would be a way to parlay playdates into time sharing on Facebook. If there was, it would be an easy way to increase their market hold on a population that has yet to be fully tapped by any social media company.
According to Business Insider, Facebook started talking about how to get children between the ages of 10 to 12 involved in Facebook in 2019. It was at that time, according to the Wall Street Journal that researchers believed that the best way to bring that demographic onboard to the social media platform, was through Messenger Kids. And given that this demographic is just beginning to be on their smartphones with any sort of frequency, getting them to use the app while at playdates seemed to be the perfect way to bring the younger audience into the Facebook fold.
The company gave itself three years to create more products for the preteen crowd, according to the Wall Street Journal. This is because both Facebook and Instagram, which is also owned by the company, are not allowed to market either of the social media platforms to kids younger than 13 per federal law, according to Newsweek. Therefore, to combat this inability to market pre-existing products, new ones that are child-appropriate need to be developed.
Unfortunately for Facebook, Messenger Kids did not have the impact on the younger generation that it hoped it would. Instead, according to the publication, the company found that instead of interest continuing to grow with the app as kids aged, interest "waned around the age 10." This is possibly because this age group views Facebook and its subsidiaries as being for adults versus kids and teens in today's fiercely competitive social media market.
For their part, Facebook said that the language from the documents that the Wall Street Journal obtained was "insensitive" and did not "reflect" what their true "approach to building the app" was. They stated, according to Business Insider that the publication was instead making "deliberate mischaracterizations" about what truly happened behind the scenes of the company.
With Instagram Kids being postponed until further notice, it is unknown whether any other developments Facebook had for younger users are on hold as well. And while Facebook may not be the only company that is attempting to increase its market share of the teen and tween market, they certainly are going to have a tough road ahead of them when they do roll out new products given the poor publicity received as of late.
Source: Newsweek, Business Insider, Wall Street Journal