The question of whether Facebook is dead has been asked every year since about 2012 — and every year Facebook proves the obituaries premature. But in 2026 the question feels more urgent than ever. Facebook has lost the youth demographic almost entirely — teenagers overwhelmingly prefer TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat — and the platform has become associated with older users, misinformation, and a kind of uncool that no amount of rebranding as Meta has fixed. Yet Facebook still has 3 billion monthly active users, making it the most used social platform on Earth. Its advertising business remains extraordinarily profitable. The metaverse bet has largely failed but the core business endures. Is Facebook genuinely dying or is it simply evolving into something different?
