NEW YORK, May 31 (Reuters) - Meta said on

Friday its flagship app Facebook is attracting its highest

number of young adults in three years, as it tries to shake the

platform's reputation as a hangout for an older generation.

The social media network said that more than 40 million U.S.

and Canadian adults aged 18 to 29 now check Facebook daily, in

Meta's first-ever release of such demographic information.

Facebook, whose founder Mark Zuckerberg turned 40 last month,

marked its 20th anniversary this year.

The growth reflects the company's efforts to recapture the

attention of young adults who have been flocking to short video

app TikTok, owned by China's ByteDance.

Meta charted "five quarters of healthy app usage growth"

among young adults, a company spokesperson said.

Facebook, founded in a Harvard University dorm in 2004,

spread like wildfire across U.S. college campuses and became the

default mass communications platform for a generation of users.

The app amassed 50 million users within its first three years

and now has 3.2 billion users globally.

Along the way, however, it became less attractive to young

users who drive consumer fads and are considered crucial by the

advertisers responsible for most of Meta's ad sales.

Only about a third of U.S. teens say they use Facebook,

according to a survey last year by research organization Pew, a

sharp drop compared to previous surveys the group conducted in

2014 and 2015.

By comparison, the share of all U.S. adults who say they use

Facebook has remained relatively flat since 2016 at around 68%,

Pew has said.