Branch cofounder Josh Miller posted an interview with his teenage sister last week, in which she explained how teens — or at least she — uses technology. It was surprising! And for many in the tech industry, a little scary.
Now investor Garry Tan has followed up with a formal survey: Using a polling service called Survata, he asked over a thousand people, across two age groups, how they use social networks. Here's what he found:
- Teens love Instagram. Nearly twice as many teens use it than adults.
- Snapchat is more popular than you think. 13% of surveyed teens are using it, versus just 4% of young adults. That's a ton of teens, considering that the app is just a year old and the media wasn't really talking about it until a couple months ago (not that 13-year-olds take their app cues from tech blogs).
- Facebook might really have an age problem. Facebook is a MUCH larger site than Tumblr, yet more teens use Tumblr than Facebook. That is not good for Facebook, and it's hard to imagine how they could turn that number around, especially with sites like Snapchat appearing out of nowhere.
Another takeaway, which perhaps should have been obvious: Every social network is used more by teens than by young adults. Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr by narrow margins; Instagram and Snapchat by whole multiples.
Oh, and teens love photos, but they hate text.