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Growth Engine

There is a toxic mix of infantilism and desperation in Facebook seeking playdates as a growth lever.

..Messenger Kids in person, according to a presentation the WSJ viewed called “Exploring playdates as a growth lever.” Facebook researchers have also tried to introduce a more holistic understanding of childhood by breaking things down into six age brackets: “adults, late teens ages 16 to maturity, teens ages 13 to 15, tweens ages 10 to 12, children ages 5 to 9 and young kids ages zero to four,” a slide mentioned in the report reads. One presentation set a goal of transitioning younger users from Instagram to the original Facebook, or the “Life Coach for Adulting.”

Facebook in a child's life is has no redeeming value - it only serves as a habit forming time sink while the mind idles. Those are best years of a person's life being wasted away. This is not even counting the mental health toll specially for tweens and teens. An article I read a while back, did a great job of summarizing Facebook's dilemma. 

Your business model determines most of the decisions you take as a company. And when your business model depends on collecting more and more data from your users, and selling that to advertisers; and when your investors have made their bets that this will go on and on, you end up taking the decisions that Facebook has. In short, you can’t serve two masters. And the person who doesn’t pay you, can’t be your master.

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