Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has announced plans to revamp Facebook, hinting at a "return to OG Facebook" in a bid to attract younger users and make the platform more "culturally influential." The move comes as the company faces declining interest among Gen Z users, who are increasingly turning to alternative social media platforms like TikTok and Snapchat.

Zuckerberg made the comments during Meta's Q4 earnings call with investors, stating that the company plans to invest in and spend time on revamping Facebook to make it more appealing to younger users. While details of the planned changes remain scarce, Zuckerberg noted that the updates would begin to roll out within the next half year or so.

The need for Facebook to revamp its platform is clear, with studies showing that younger users are increasingly abandoning the platform. According to a study by eMarketer, U.S. Gen Z users aged 18-24 spend far more time on TikTok, followed by Instagram and Snapchat, with Facebook lagging behind. A 2024 survey by Pew Research found that Facebook use among U.S. teens aged 13-17 had dropped sharply from 71% in 2014-2015 to just 33%.

Meta has long been aware of the challenges it faces in attracting younger users, having launched a Gen Z-focused redesign of Facebook in October 2024. The redesign aimed to emphasize local community information, videos, and Facebook Groups, among other features. However, the company's ability to compete with TikTok, Gen Z's preferred app, remains uncertain.

Moreover, Gen Z users have sent a strong signal that they're ready to move on from Meta's platforms, with many downloading alternative apps like RedNote during the briefly enforced U.S. TikTok ban. This raises questions about whether Facebook can ever again attract younger users by returning to its "OG" roots.

Meta has previously attempted to reignite Facebook's original feeling of exclusivity by launching a side platform called Campus in 2020, catering to college and university students. However, the effort was shuttered a year and a half later after failing to take off. The company has also dabbled in using other services, like online dating, to lure in new users with little success.

Meanwhile, new social networks are emerging on the open social web, powered by protocols like ActivityPub and AT Protocol, allowing users to take back control over their data and social connections from centralized, billionaire-controlled platforms owned by Big Tech. As these networks grow, they'll become competition for efforts like an "OG Facebook."

It's worth noting that Meta has been working to shield investors from Facebook's decline for years. In 2019, the company introduced new metrics called family daily active people and family monthly active people. Later, in 2024, Meta took steps to distance itself from per-app metrics by eliminating daily active and monthly active users in its quarterly reports in favor of its family of apps' metrics.

The move was meant to better showcase how many people engaged with all of Meta's products, not just Facebook and Messenger. However, it's likely that the decision also served to hide Facebook's decline within Meta's larger "family" group of apps.

As Meta works to revamp Facebook and attract younger users, the company's ability to adapt to changing user preferences and compete with emerging social networks will be crucial to its success.