Teens Are Flocking To Snapchat As Twitter Struggles To Attract The Younger Demographic

Teens and young adults between the ages of 12 and 24 are flocking to Snapchat, while slowing on their traditional path towards Twitter.

A new phone survey conducted by Edison Research and Triton Digital, Snapchat is now the fastest growing social network. The study found that 13% of phone respondents admitted to using Snapchat, up from 3% during the same period last year.

According to Edison Research there are plenty of reasons for the shift and the team at BI Intelligence has compiled the main findings:

Forty-three percent of 12 to 24 years old said they ever use Snapchat, and more than half of the survey’s respondents in the same age group said they have an Instagram account.
Only 36% of teens and young adults said they ever use Twitter, seven percentage points less than ever use Snapchat.
Twitter takes the lead over Snapchat when looking at all respondents 12 and older. Sixteen percent of total respondents said they ever use Twitter, compared to 13% with an account on Snapchat. That’s actually a surprisingly narrow lead, given how much longer Twitter has been around.
Having an account on Instagram was still more common across all age groups, at 19%, than ever using Twitter, at 16%.
Facebook still matters. It is by far the most popular social network, with 80% of respondents between 12 and 24 years old and 58% of all age groups saying that they have a personal profile on the social network.

Attracting younger, more hip crowds, is a constant problem for aging social networks. In fact, that is largely believed to be why Mark Zuckerberg agreed to purchase WhatsApp for $19 billion. Younger users simply don’t flock to Facebook as they once did.

Do you think Snapchat is going to be the next $19 billion acquisition?