Technically, the poke never really left Facebook. This classic feature from the platform’s early days allows users to get a friend’s attention with a virtual nudge. Although the poke fell out of common use long ago, the company has recently seen an increase in its popularity among younger users. This uptick has now prompted Facebook to make the poke a more central part of the overall experience.
Users can now poke their friends directly from a new, dedicated button on their Facebook profile. This action sends a notification to the recipient. Additionally, users can see who has poked them and find friends to poke on a dedicated page. On this page, users can track their “poke count” with friends, a number that increases each time they poke each other back and forth. Users also have the option to dismiss pokes if they do not wish to reciprocate.
The poke-tracking feature is largely designed to appeal to younger users who have grown up with gamification elements in their social apps, such as streaks on Snapchat and TikTok. These features ostensibly help friends keep track of those they message most frequently. However, streaks have also faced regulatory scrutiny and even led to lawsuits due to their addictive nature, which can keep young users hooked on the apps.
By highlighting poke counts and making the feature more prominent, Meta aims to create a similar engagement mechanism. As users increase their poke counts with a specific friend, different icons will appear next to that friend’s name, such as a fire emoji or the number 100.
This is not the first recent attempt by Facebook to revive the poke. In March 2024, the company made it easier to find the poking page via search and simplified the process of poking a friend after searching for them. Those small changes led to a thirteenfold spike in poking activity in the following month, according to Meta.
The purpose of a poke has always been left open to user interpretation. Facebook never officially explained its function. A poke could be used to catch someone’s attention, to flirt, or simply to annoy them, all depending on the user’s intent.
Poke counts may never become as popular as streaks on other platforms, but their introduction signals that Meta is actively looking for ways to boost engagement on Facebook. According to research from author Jon Haidt, who wrote “The Anxious Generation,” Snap had known about the habit-forming nature of streaks for years. Internal documents discussed how popular and effective streaks were at driving user engagement.
While Facebook remains a significant source of revenue for Meta, funding its long-term investments in areas like artificial intelligence and the metaverse, it has long been criticized for failing to attract younger users. This demographic has been in decline, particularly in the United States. The company has tried various initiatives to recapture the youth market, including the short-lived college-only network Facebook Campus, which was shut down in 2022, and more recently, a redesign focused specifically on Gen Z users.