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Comment by Ros2 | Hacker News Reader

Snapchat is the only social media that actually celebrates the impermanence and general boringness of everyday life.

Instagram and Facebook may have stories but the site is heavily predicated on pride/narcissism arms race with your "friends".

Even your biggest narcissist can only "win" for 24 hours on Snapchat and from what I can see they'll generally tap out of keeping up any facades to try and make others jealous about how (seemingly) great their life is within 4-5 weeks of using it and then join others in appreciating the little things that make life worth living.

Your own personal values and mileage may vary, but they've hit a niche with me.

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I think that "niche" is what you share with most people under 19 or so as of today.

People are quick to write off Snapchat's popularity with young users as it being the hot new toy they will tire with, but I think it's a lot deeper than that. They see the mistakes of millennials and older with social media and want nothing to do with it (and are thus nowhere to be found on Facebook, yet still on Instagram because it hasn't suffered the same problems yet). Snapchat avoids a lot of those pitfalls, though of course not without other problems. I think so long as that impermanence is the focus, and they allow for easy/simple communication between close friends (I'm worried about the non-chronological part for this exact reason), they will be a big part of the future of social media.

Facebook and the apps it owns have all tried towards that, but if the core is permanence (the classic profile, posts, walls, likes, comments), they will always be fighting a rising tide. Adding stories on top of that doesn't change the core use of the app.

>> They see the mistakes of millennials and older with social media and want nothing to do with it (and are thus nowhere to be found on Facebook, yet still on Instagram because it hasn't suffered the same problems yet)

I’d be interested to see data to support this assertion.

It's hard data to get because people still have Facebook accounts, they just don't post on them. In order to get that data, Facebook would have to release it by choice, and good luck with that one.

Do an experiment though. Look at all your friends around 17-18 (hard if you're older to get a good sample size, but find someone who has friends that age if possible). Now scroll through their walls and see when you hit 2016. I bet it's pretty quick in 75%+ cases.

I just did it on the few I have (siblings of college friends). One took 4 posts to get to 2015. Two of those were blocks of happy birthday posts grouped together. I know all of those people are very active on Instagram though.

Now if you can, look at people ages 23-25 or so. See how much more they post.

This is of course only data you can essentially get from being young and having access to friends in both ranges. But I see it time and time again.

Recent news, confirming: https://www.recode.net/2018/2/12/16998750/facebooks-teen-use...

It's not a niche. 40% of snapchat users are 25 and older and another 37% are 18-24 which makes 77% over 18: https://www.statista.com/statistics/326452/snapchat-age-grou...

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply the age group is the niche, nor actually did I mean to imply the value was niche either, hence the quotes. I typed the comment that way though because I think a large proportion of people over about 24 don't understand the value of Snapchat for various reasons, often beleiving the value is "niche".

I also put that cutoff at 19 for a reason based on my experience with others. I'm right on the border of millennial and whatever they decide comes after it. Most people my age used Facebook originally and evacuated gradually over the past 3-5 years. If you look at people 19 and under, they are barely to be found at all on Facebook since they would be aged 16-14 at the time of that evacuation, and thus have no need to evacuate if they never had an account they used in a significant manner.

> They see the mistakes of millennials and older with social media and want nothing to do with it (and are thus nowhere to be found on Facebook, yet still on Instagram because it hasn't suffered the same problems yet).

I have a hard time believing that people under 18 are making a conscious decision on this, especially the 'see the mistakes of milennials' part. They're only concerned with themselves an their status in their group, just like millenials were, but on a different platform.

My early teen sister, for example, uses Instagram and Snapchat for two reasons: all het friends use it, my mom doesn't want her to use Facebook because it has a bad rep. The fact that Instagram is owned by Facebook is something that most people, outside of the well informed, are unaware of.

They definitely are.

Their moms (say 26-36yo range here) are on facebook, post pictures of them, and like their posts. It's never going to be the youth platform as long as everything said is said in front of your mom, dad, grandma, and racist uncle.

Young people -desperately- want to take selfies that won't get dredged up 3 years later, and have been hearing about horror stories about people posting pictures of illicit or just immature activities since myspace. A kid who has been aware of their whole life is about <20yo.

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