Snapchat has surpassed Instagram as the social media bae of choice among teenagers, according to a study done by Piper Jaffray.
In the semi-annual “Taking Stock With Teens” study conducted by analysts at the investment firm, Snapchat took 28% of the votes for the most important social network among 6,350 U.S. Teenagers surveyed, who averaged around 17 years of age.
That number is up from the 19% who sided with Snapchat in the Fall 2015 survey, and more importantly, meant that the mobile app had surpassed Instagram, which had 27% of the vote this round compared with 33% last fall.
“As we stated in the Fall, we expected Snapchat to surpass Twitter in the Spring, but did not expect it to jump over Instagram,” the analysts wrote in a presentation provided to Coins2Day.
Such was the dominance of Snapchat and Instagram, that analysts believed there are tiers of importance forming among teenage users. “We view Instagram and Snapchat in a class of their own followed by Facebook (FB) and Twitter (TWTR),” the presentation stated.
Other insights gleaned from Piper Jaffray: total teen spending seems to be down 4% over the last spring-to-fall period, and when it came to fashion-related items, spending dropped by 6% year-on-year. Analysts noted that parent contributions to teenage spending was at its lowest levels since 2010, although it could be attributed to “more kids taking on part-time employment” versus economic-related reasons.
