Move Over Facebook And Snapchat. Instagram Is Dominating Teen’s Life Now
Recent survey had shown that Instagram is the king when it comes to teens. In other words, Instagram is the number one go-to social media platforms for teens.
Piper Jaffray has been tracking how teenagers use the internet for nearly twenty years, and the second report of this year has some interesting findings indeed.
There are some important (shocking) takeaways in the survey conducted:
- 85 percent of teens report using Instagram at least once a month, up from 79 percent in the fall of 2016
- 84 percent of teens report using Snapchat at least once a month, up from 80 percent in the fall of 2016
- Just 36 percent of teens report using Facebook at least once a month, down from 52 percent in the fall of 2016
Now, it is important to understand that the this survey was done back in 2016 and 2017.
We are now in 2019 and take a look around.
Businesses are going to Instagram-able products (with no exceptions for the food and beverages). Social media influencers are using Instagram more than ever … to grow their target audience and to encourage conversions.
But, Instagram is not alone in the race
Snapchat is still gaining traction especially with 46% of teen’s social media usage, followed by Instagram with 32%, Twitter at 6% and Facebook at only 5%.
Here’s an important note. There are more teens using Instagram on a daily basis but when it comes to the teen’s preferred social media platform, they still prefer Snapchat.
This particular survey revealed the reason behind the seeming disconnect.
Instagram is the social media channel of choice when it comes to brand engagement of teens, with an overwhelming majority of teens preferring to be contacted by brands via Instagram.
Snapchat knows this —and trust me that they are doing everything they can do improve the numbers.
Snapchat is basically a social media platform that allows users to do a lot of cool and short videos … and they get automatically deleted after a certain amount of time.
On the other hand, Instagram allows teens to publish videos, photos and even auto delete videos/photos (just like Snapchat does). More importantly, the constant updates on Instagram allows it to surpass Snapchat in numerous occasions … which indirectly allows Instagram to dominate the teen’s social media preference.
Snapchat needs to domore
Unless Snapchat makes a major misstep in handling that segment of the demographic, they’re unlikely to lose them in the longer term.
Moreimportantly, Snapchat also faces strong competition from Facebook especially with the bastion of older users. In most cases, mom and dad check their Facebook accounts while teens check Instagram.
How can businesses market effectively to teens?
Marketing is all about reaching the right target audience using the right platform.
If you are targeting teens, you should well aware that both Snapchat and Instagrams are going to dominate the market for a long, long time.
If you don’t have a robust presence on Instagram and Snapchat (for this matter), then your social media isn’t doing as much for you as it could be.
Finally, this leads us to one last question.
What are you doing to make sure you are doing whatever it takes to market successfully to teens?
Related read: What is Facebook lookalike audiences?