It’s safe to say that The Teens hate Facebook and Twitter as much as the rest of us.
At least, that’s according to a 91-page survey put out this week by analysts at the financial firm Piper Sandler. The lengthy report, titled “Taking Stock With Teens,” quizzed 10,000 US teenagers on everything from the social causes they support to the brands that they buy on a regular basis. The report also asked these teens what their favourite platforms were — and for the most part, they’re names that you’d expect: 35% of teens named Snapchat at the top, with TikTok as a close second (30%). And in spite of Instagram doing everything it can to cannibalise user bases from both of those players, the platform ranked third, with only 22% labelling it as their fave.
In a distant, distant last-place finish were Facebook and Twitter: only 2% of the teens surveyed labelled either of these platforms as their favourite.
Twitter hasn’t always repelled younger users — in fact, less than a decade ago we saw them actively flock to everyone’s favourite bird app, largely because their parents and peers weren’t there. It was a place where they could post their weird, dumb memes without worrying about someone at school bothering them about it the next day.
But in the years since, Twitter hasn’t only become noisier and more crowded, it’s also turned into a political force that’s less about socialising and more about, well, The News. Facebook, meanwhile, has never really been popular among teens; not because they’re ideologically opposed to Zuckerberg, but because it feels “old.” And they’re right; Facebook is a platform that’s overrun by people’s mums, dads, and uncles; can you think of a less cool place to hang out?
Considering how this is the second year in a row that Snapchat reigned supreme, it doesn’t seem likely that The Teens are going to be dumping the platform anytime soon — which is great news for Snapchat’s shareholders, and not-so-great news for Instagram.