Twenty years on, something quite logical has happened: **Facebook has grown up with them.**
Those who set up their accounts at the age of 20, 25 or 30 in the 2000s are now in their 40s, 50s or older. They didn’t necessarily choose Facebook in the same way people choose TikTok, Instagram or a new app today. Facebook was simply always there. On their phones, part of their routines and, at times, part of their lives.
This probably best explains its current image as the ‘social network for older people’.
The phenomenon is, in fact, more subtle than young people simply abandoning Facebook. In the United States, data from the Pew Research Centre shows that Facebook continues to be used by all generations, but that its core daily user base lies more among those aged 30–49 and 50–64. Conversely, Instagram, TikTok and Snapchat are much more strongly associated with younger people.
In France, too, Facebook has by no means become marginal. Meta’s advertising tools still indicated around **31.5 million potentially reachable users in France by the end of 2025**, representing nearly 59 per cent of adults. In other words, the ‘old people’s network’ remains enormous.
But its problem lies elsewhere: **Facebook is no longer culturally young.**
The younger generations are coming online without needing Facebook. Their gateway is elsewhere. TikTok to discover things, Instagram to show off or follow others, Snapchat to chat, YouTube to watch videos. For them, Facebook sometimes resembles what mainstream television represented for their parents: something important and massive, but which already belongs to a bygone era.
There’s even an almost sociological reason for this: young people have always sought out spaces where their parents aren’t.
Yet Facebook has, in fact, become the very place where parents are.
And sometimes grandparents, too.
It’s hard to build a new digital identity when Mum comments ‘you look gorgeous, darling!’ under every photo.
But those who have stayed on Facebook have a very powerful reason not to leave: **they’ve built up fifteen or twenty years of digital life there.**
Hundreds of friends. Groups. Photographs. Birthdays. Memories. Former colleagues. Distant cousins. Charities. Local pages. Groups dedicated to their town, their neighbourhood, their hobby or their job.
Leaving Facebook, then, isn’t just a matter of switching apps.
It sometimes means abandoning a small archive of one’s own existence.
That is why loyalty to Facebook often stems less from enthusiasm than from habit. We open the app mechanically. Just as we used to switch on the radio when we walked into the kitchen. We glance at two birthdays, three posts from friends, a local news item, a video, then close it.
And we do it all over again the next day.
Facebook also has something that newer social media platforms struggle to replicate: **the depth of time**.
An Instagram account can be aesthetically pleasing. TikTok can be extraordinarily addictive. But Facebook preserves the traces of a life. It suddenly reminds you of a photograph posted fourteen years ago. A forgotten trip. An old house. Someone who’s gone. A night out that nobody remembered anymore.
This memory function naturally becomes more powerful as the user gets older.
Facebook is therefore no longer just a social network. For some, it has become a **digital attic**.
We must also look at what is shared there. Neighbourhood groups, associations, classifieds, Marketplace, professional communities and groups dedicated to specific hobbies still give Facebook a considerable practical dimension.
People no longer necessarily go there to be trendy.
They go there because everyone else is already there.
This is precisely the strength and weakness of the system.
Because a social network depends heavily on the people on it. When your friends, your parents, your sports club, your local council, your charity and your old schoolmates are already using Facebook, creating an account elsewhere almost forces you to completely rebuild your digital environment.
That takes effort.
And as we get older, we may also be less keen on constantly having to learn the ropes of a new platform simply because it’s just become trendy.
Facebook thus becomes the network for those who say: **“Why change? This one works just fine.”**
Meta is fully aware of the problem. The group has, in fact, stated its intention to win back young adults and has identified this demographic as one of the key priorities for Facebook’s future. The very fact that it recognises the need to win back young people speaks volumes about the platform’s demographic shift.
It would, however, be unfair to conclude that Facebook is doomed simply because it is ageing.
In fact, the opposite may well be true.
For the first time in human history, a vast generation is growing older alongside the internet. They are obviously not going to stop using digital tools at the age of 50, 60 or 70 simply because teenagers have discovered a new app.
Facebook could therefore become something quite unprecedented: **the first major intergenerational social network that is ageing along with its users.**
The platform that was once for students has become one for families, people in their fifties, organisations, reunions and memories.
And perhaps the most amusing part is yet to come.
In twenty years’ time, those who today mock the ‘oldies on Facebook’ will themselves be in their 40s or 50s. They may still automatically open TikTok or Instagram, wondering why their children spend their time on some new, incomprehensible platform.
They’ll probably explain:
‘I’m sticking with TikTok. All my memories are on there.’
And their children will look at them as if they were old fogies.
