They bought Instagram because nobody under 25 uses Facebook. The only people who use Facebook are advertisers and people who don't mind choking on advertisements, or people whose high school friends are on Facebook instead of Instagram or Snapchat. As an aside, I didn't recommend DS9. I just gave you a drubbing for (A) having it stand in for all of science fiction (B) slagging on a season of television near-universally reviled and then accusing everyone else of having low standards for liking the shit that we totally didn't. I gave up on DS9 after Season 4.
http://www.pewinternet.org/2016/11/11/social-media-update-2016/ Everybody says the kids don't use Facebook but at least some research says exactly the opposite. I'm open to looking at other figures but untill I see them I'll count the Facebook hating children as pundit lore.
"use" is such a slippery term. You'll notice that the study you found cuts off at 18; they ran the numbers in 2015 but "use" counts as "I've logged into it in the past two weeks. Young adults have Facebook the same reason you have LinkedIn - that's where grownups expect to find you. College recruiters look at your Facebook. Employers look at your Facebook. Your friends look at Instagram and Snapchat, so Instagram and Snapchat are where your engagement is.
So basically, if anyone has stock in Facebook, it might be a good idea to bail before they eventually go the way of Myspace or Yahoo? I know you didn't recommend DS9. I just thought I'd bring it up again in passing, because it's on in the background. I'm mostly watching it for the sake of friendship. The next time he comes over, I'm giving him one of my antennas, so he can watch old sitcoms and westerns on daytime TV.
It's a big question. Their PE ratio is unhealthy but it's not Amazon batshit or Tesla negative. They have revenue. They have a silo'd marketplace. But they're worth what they can get from advertisers and the advertisers be bitchin'. I'm in cash. I'm not interested in this market.