Get Off My Facebook Lawn!

 


Get Off My Meta-Space Lawn...you dang kids!



I’m a regular user of Facebook. I’m also 64 years old. I’ll be 65 in February 2022. That means, I’m a serious problem for the boys and girls at Meta, Facebook’s newly renamed parent company. 


It is nice to know that I can be a bother, now and then, to billionaires.


Here’s the background. According to an article in The Verge, Facebook’s bosses are increasingly concerned by the fact that young people are turning to other forms of social media.* Every year, more and more teens and tweens are abandoning Facebook for pretty much anything else on the web.


Of course, to people outside of Facebook, that’s no surprise. We boomers have known for a long time that once we found ourselves Facebooking in a big way, our children and, now, grandchildren, would flee our boring postings and wrinkled profile pictures for younger climes. The only surprise for us is that it took so long for Facebook’s people to notice.


But, you know, if Facebook really wants its youth back, maybe I can make a little suggestion. To wit, maybe…maybe…it could stop being a bully pulpit for reactionary hate-mongers who preach abusive, racist, sexist drivel that is guaranteed to drive young people away and make them loathe the platform forever...maybe a few teens and twenty-somethings might come back. 


It’s a crazy idea, I admit…


But it just might work.


~mjt



Source: “Facebook’s lost generation: The world’s largest social network is internally grappling with an existential crisis: an aging user base,” by Alex Heath, The Verge, Oct 25, 2021, https://www.theverge.com/22743744/facebook-teen-usage-decline-frances-haugen-leaks


Copyright©2021 Michael Jay Tucker

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