Facebook can't shake its teen problem, but its user base is getting younger

Teens continue to leave Facebook, and the platform won’t be able to reverse that trend in 2022. But in a surprising twist, the average age of a Facebook user is starting to decrease.

Facebook will lose 1.5 million teen users between 2020 and 2025. Facebook’s decline among consumers ages 12 to 17 will continue, and just 35.3% of internet users in that age group will use the platform in 2022. In 2024, that figure will drop to under one-third.

There will be more Gen Z than baby boomer Facebook users by 2023. Facebook may be losing teen users, but its user base is still getting younger. Next year, there will be 34.7 million US Gen Z Facebook users versus 33.1 million US baby boomer users, and that gap will widen through 2025. Aging is the key driver here: Gen Z is growing up, and as they do, some will join (or rejoin) Facebook. Baby boomers are also growing older and aging out of social media.

Millennials and Gen X are still Facebook’s main users. Together, those two generations will make up more than half of Facebook’s US user base in 2022. Even as Gen Z’s user share rises, it won’t reach that of either Gen X or millennials through at least 2025.

Facebook will add nearly 9 million US users between 2020 and 2025. While it may not seem like much, it’s still good growth given Facebook’s already wide reach among US consumers. It’s also enough to more than make up for Facebook’s losses among teens and keep the platform’s penetration rate among internet users steady through 2025.