Facebook Is Not Dead, It's Thriving, Survey Suggests

A recent survey reveals that Facebook might not be as dead as many assumed, and might in fact be a valid platform when it comes to engaging younger audiences. Or is it?

Facebook
Facebook is popping off | © Solen Feyissa

According to a recent survey, Facebook is far from being a dead platform and is in fact still one of the main social media platforms publishers use to engage younger audiences.

Survey Reveals Facebook Reigns Supreme For Publishers

The report was released by Washington Post's Arc XP and Digiday, with around 116 publishers taking part in the survey as well as various people you could consider Gen Z (16-25) and Millennials (26-32).

One of the most interesting and mind-blowing findings of the report was that Facebook still was one of the key platforms publishers used to engage younger audiences.

Arc XP survey 2
Who could have seen this coming? | © Digiday + Arc XP

Obviously there is an argument to be made, that publishers are just out of touch, as the president of Arc XP, Miki King states:

“I largely think that the numbers you’re seeing from publishers might be because the data analysis they have has not caught up to where the consumer audience is right now.”

This also shows in the report when it comes to the content channels younger users prefer, with YouTube easily coming out on top and Facebook barely making it in the top 5.

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This looks more like what you would expect when they ask GenZ| © Digiday/Arc XP

This ranking probably makes a lot more sense to most of you (even though Facebook is still a little higher than expected), and just goes to show how out of touch some publishers are. YouTube even scored highly when it comes to discovering new publishers and content.

It's also interesting that even though YouTube shorts are the preferred medium, Gen Z will still read text when the content is of sufficient quality. Good to know, as that is pretty much my job!

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This became evident as short-form & long-form text were the second and third most preferred format for Gen Z to consume content.

One thing we can take away from this is that publishers should consider staying at the pulse of time a little more by maybe hiring some Gen Z folks or just people that are part of their target audience.

Robert Bachhuber

As a master graduate of sociology who wrote his thesis about Twitch, Robert knows a fair share about streaming. Adding to that, he loves binge-watching TV shows, so he got entertainment covered....