More Facebook users in recent weeks are opening a notification they forgot even existed: A “poke” from a friend.
Poking was perhaps the earliest feature to promote interaction among Facebook users. It came with the site’s launch in 2004, long before likes and reactions were introduced. During its heyday in the early 2010s, the function was a simple means of saying “hi.” The ability to continually poke one person back and forth often led to poke wars that, eventually, fizzled out as the function itself faded into obscurity.
Facebook said it saw a 13-fold spike in “poking” over the past month, with more than half of all pokes being sent by users between 18 and 29 years old. The company declined to share specific numbers on its usage.
The recent surge came after the Meta-owned platform quietly updated the feature last month, making it easier to find. Typing variations of “poking” in the search bar will lead users to a Pokes page, where they can see who’s poked them as well as a list of suggested friends to poke. Users can now also find a “Poke” button under friends who show up in search results.
“We know poking has strong network effects, but we didn’t expect poking to grow so rapidly after these changes,” a spokesperson for Meta wrote in an email. “We didn’t announce anything about poking at the time either.”
For some longtime Facebook users, the feature still evokes a strong sense of nostalgia.
Brooklin Dugey, 26, said she used to dole out pokes to everyone she knew. More than a decade later, she said she still finds the interaction funny — although nowadays she limits her poking to just close friends and family.
“I think it’s just a silly, cute little way to reach out to someone and to keep a streak going,” Dugey said. “It’s such a simple thing to do but also just being called a ‘poke’ tickles me.”
Some online also expressed surprise that Gen Z contributed most to the recent increase in poking, wondering how…
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