Instagram frets over losing teen 'pipeline'

SAN FRANCISCO • When Instagram reached one billion users in 2018, Mr Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's chief executive, called it "an amazing success".

The photo-sharing app, which Facebook owns, was widely hailed as a hit with young people and celebrated as a growth engine for the social network. But even as Mr Zuckerberg praised Instagram, the app was privately lamenting the loss of teenage users to other social media platforms as an "existential threat", according to a 2018 marketing presentation.

By last year, the issue had become more urgent, according to internal Instagram documents obtained by The New York Times.

"If we lose the teen foothold in the US we lose the pipeline," read a strategy memo from October last year that laid out a marketing plan for this year. Instagram left little to chance. Starting in 2018, it earmarked almost its entire global annual marketing budget - slated at US$390 million (S$523 million) this year - to targeting teenagers, largely through digital ads, according to documents and people directly involved in the process.

Focusing so singularly on a narrow age group is highly unusual, marketers said, although the final spending went beyond teenagers and encompassed their parents and young adults.

The Instagram documents, which have not previously been reported, reveal the firm's angst and dread as it has wrestled behind the scenes with retaining, engaging and attracting young users.

Even as Instagram was heralded as one of Facebook's crown jewels, it turned to extraordinary spending measures to get the attention of teenagers. The firm particularly emphasised a category called "early high school", which it classified as youth aged 13 to 15.

But the documents also show that Facebook has since abandoned aspirations of becoming a teen destination, just as Instagram has increasingly debated how to hang on to youthful audiences.

The disclosures underscore how much is at stake for Facebook as it seeks to address an outcry in Congress and from the public over the effects of Instagram on its users' mental health.

According to separate documents from a Facebook whistle-blower, Ms Frances Haugen, the social media company deliberately kept people, including children, hooked to its services.

Instagram's fears about losing young users also highlights how much the Internet industry prizes them and how elusive their attention can be. Instagram, which Facebook bought in 2012, has plenty of cachet with teenagers, but competitors such as TikTok, the Chinese-owned video app, and Snapchat, the ephemeral messaging app, keep nipping at its heels.

Instagram, with more than 1.3 billion users, remains the biggest of those platforms, with TikTok at one billion users and Snapchat at 293 million, according to data from the companies.

But in a survey this year from the financial services company Piper Sandler, 35 per cent of teenagers said Snapchat was their favourite social media platform, with 30 per cent choosing TikTok. Instagram was third with 22 per cent.

"In any media industry, the newest, coolest thing sees the highest uptake among younger generations," said associate professor Brooke Duffy at Cornell University, who studies media, culture and tech.

That puts incumbents on the defensive, she said, adding: "We're in a cultural moment where people just seem to be getting tired of the aspirational, performative culture of Instagram."

NYTIMES