Teens & Social: What’s the Latest?

Instagram remains the most important social network to teens, widening its lead over Facebook and Instagram, according to the latest semi-annual teen survey from Piper Jaffray.

The results indicate that:

  • Instagram is the “most important” social network to the largest proportion (32%) of teens surveyed, up a couple of points from a year earlier;
  • Twitter continues to be the second-most important social network, cited by 24%; and
  • Facebook (14%) is narrowly ahead of Snapchat (13%) for the third spot.

It is interesting to see Snapchat – identified for the first time in the survey – rivaling Facebook in the survey results. Its inclusion appears to have diluted the share of respondents citing Facebook or Twitter as their most important, although it had no such effect on the results for Instagram, further cementing that platform’s popularity with this sample demographic.

The previous survey from Piper Jaffray (released in October 2014) had reported just 4% of teens using Snapchat, a surprising result given that network’s growing popularity with youth.

In that survey, Instagram was the most popular social network, used by 76% of teens, ahead of Twitter (59%) and Facebook (45%).

In other words, it’s probably safe to assume that Facebook-owned properties (whether Facebook or Instagram) are among the most popular with teens, with Snapchat very much in the conversation.

Twitter’s position seems a little more difficult to ascertain, although it’s clearly in the top 4. It will be interesting to see the next edition of Piper Jaffray’s survey now that they are including Snapchat as an option.

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