From the archive. First published in November 2015. Rewritten for clarity, with a note on what happened afterwards.
In 2015 we shared a piece of reporting in which children aged nine to thirteen were asked what they thought of Facebook, and were largely indifferent. It was presented, as these things always are, as a sign the platform was finished.
What actually happened
Facebook grew from roughly 1.5 billion monthly users then to more than three billion now. Instagram passed three billion on its own in September 2025. The company’s advertising business is far larger than it was.
The underlying observation was not wrong, though. Younger users did move to Instagram, Snapchat and later TikTok. The mistake was assuming that meant the platform was dying rather than ageing.
Why this matters for valuing a page
Platform demographics changed, and that changes what a page is worth rather than whether it is worth anything.
- Facebook’s audience skews older than it did, which is attractive for some advertisers and useless for others. If your page’s audience is twenty somethings, verify that in the insights rather than assuming.
- Audience country still matters more than age. It remains the biggest single driver of what a page sells for.
- Engagement is the test of life, not demographics. A page with an older, attentive audience beats a younger, indifferent one every time.
The general lesson about predictions
This blog has covered the death of Facebook, the death of pages, the death of organic reach and the death of the page market. Each had real evidence behind it and each was overstated. What happens in practice is repricing: the market falls, settles at a new level, and continues. Our piece on how reach was throttled has the numbers behind that pattern.
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