I know this has been a regular topic of discussion lately, as Facebook users are looking for alternatives, but there is a harsh reality I think netizens of the fediverse need to acknowledge that will keep the majority of Facebook users locked in. That is the personal social graph that Facebook has built up for users over the years. No other site on the web has a way to find nearly anyone you have ever known, from high school friends to long lost family members. The reason for this is because of the format of Facebook being “you” on the web. Your profile is your name, your personal info, and it is even linked to your phone number and contacts, making social networking incredibly easy.
The closest that exists for this on the fediverse is Friendica, but it is more of a reddit/twitter hybrid imo, and while you can make your profile page personal, the posts you make will go to the entire fediverse. This lack of privacy and tailoring of your messages to a particular audience is what is going to make Facebook unbeatable for the foreseeable future. People want alternatives, but these alternatives simply do not exist.
I would be very curious to hear about efforts to make sites on the fediverse more personalized and enabling of people to control their audience, because this (along with improving user experience) is the biggest thing I think is keeping people from making the switch.
From kids perspectives it is different. For young people anyone over 25 is old, solidly adult, not “with it”, washed, etc. Contrasts that with almost 70% of tiktok users are under 24, with over 50% of creators in the 18 to 24 range. That’s solidly a young people social network. Facebook is in comparison made of old people. Most young people who engage with Meta do so through Instagram, and have a Facebook account because IG nags them to create one. But they aren’t going there or spending any significant amount of time engaging with Facebook itself. Facebook follows the global age distribution more closely, but users and active users engaging are entirely different things.