Facebook is taking swift action to address its teen user growth problem worrying investors

Published Mon, Oct 25 20218:15 PM EDT

Facebook on Monday addressed perhaps the most pertinent business problem highlighted by the trove of internal documents released so far by the whistleblower Frances Haugen: that use among teenagers has been declining. In a call regarding the company's third-quarter earnings, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told analysts that the company would be pivoting its Facebook and Instagram services to better appeal to younger users between the ages of 18 to 29. Specifically, the company plans to do this by making its full-screen video Reels feature a central focus of the two apps over the coming year, Zuckerberg said. "Every once in a while a format comes along that allows new types of content. We saw this with News Feed, we saw it with Stories," Zuckerberg said. "And I think Reels, from everything I've seen, has the potential to be something of that scale." The announcement came after reports on Monday based on the Haugen documents showed that Facebook usage among teenagers was slowing. The documents demonstrated that the number of teenage users of the Facebook app in the U.S. has declined by 13% since 2019, with a projected drop of 45% over the next two years, according to The Verge . The documents also showed that Facebook researchers had found that the company was not expecting people born after 2000 to join the social network until they were 24 or 25 years old, if they ever joined at all, according to Bloomberg . That's why Facebook addressed the matter swiftly and immediately. Zuckerberg noted that TikTok in particular has emerged as "one of the most effective competitors that we have ever faced." CFO Dave Wehner also acknowledged that Snapchat , which last year launched a similar feature called Spotlight, has been a tough competitor among teens. The changes to make Reels a more key focus for Facebook and Instagram will not happen overnight. Zuckerberg said the company will give all its apps the goal of being the best services for young adults, and later, he said that "this shift will take years, not months, to fully execute." When asked by an analyst for specific user numbers for the Reels feature, which is already available on both Instagram and Facebook, Wehner did not give any specific figures beyond saying that the company is happy with the progress Reels has made on Instagram. In order to spur adoption of Reels, Facebook announced last month that it will pay certain creators "based on the performance of their reels." That money will come from a program Facebook had previously announced to pay $1 billion to creators through 2022. Facebook and Zuckerberg have vehemently refuted many of the claims that have arisen from Haugen's documents, but in the case of slowing use among teenagers, the company was quick to act.

Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive officer and founder of Facebook Inc., speaks during a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Wednesday, April 11, 2018.

Andrew Harrer | Bloomberg | Getty Images