Bangladesh has seen a considerable decline in the number of Facebook users over the past six months, despite the fact that Meta recently rated Bangladesh third in terms of active users.
The maximum number of Facebook members in Bangladesh, at around 58,943,000 in July 2022, was reported by the Poland-based platform NapoleonCat. This number subsequently decreased to about 46,548,000 in January of this year. That indicates that during the course of six months, Facebook lost close to 12,395,000 account holders from Bangladesh.
According to the platform, which tracks social media performance, around 26.6% of Bangladesh’s overall population utilizes Facebook. The majority of them—roughly 68% of them—are male, while the youngest group, those between the ages of 18 and 24, make up 44% of all Facebook users.
Another online data analysis company, DataReportal, asserts that there are less Facebook users in Bangladesh and that between October of last year and January of this year, 3.7 million fewer people were reached by various Facebook advertisers.
Not only are Facebook users declining, but during the past six months, users of Instagram, LinkedIn, and Messenger have all steadily decreased across the nation. NapoleonCat reports that 670,000 users of accounts have stopped scrolling via Instagram, 10,141,000 users have stopped scrolling on Messenger, and about 3.8 million users have stopped scrolling through LinkedIn.
In December of last year, more than 5 million people in Bangladesh utilized the professional website LinkedIn, but that number dropped substantially to 1.8 million in January of this year, according to the platform.
Professor BM Mainul Hossain of the Dhaka University (DU) information technology institute told Prothom Alo that there are now several social media and OTT platforms, including TikTok, for people’s amusement and recreation. He said that the trend is subject to change. There are various activities people may do besides upload status updates.
These factors could lead to a decline in the country’s use of the Meta’s services, he noted.
