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Comment by jeffbee | Hacker News Reader

Interesting. Snap is one of the few along with TikTok and Instagram, that are still heavily used by teens, according to recent Pew research.

https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2022/08/10/teens-social...

A couple days ago they also got Protocol to reprint their press release about cutting cloud expenses:

https://www.protocol.com/enterprise/snap-microservices-aws-g...

Sounds like they are moving decisively toward profitability instead of growth for growth's sake.

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Anecdotal obviously, but I’m barely outside this demographic at 22. I can tell you that nobody around my age in NYC uses snap anymore. In fact, it’s looked at with shock or disdain if someone mentions that they opened it for one reason or another.

I have a high school aged daughter and Snapchat is the messaging platform of choice among the kids at her school. It is not just a local thing. She also participates in a sport which has her travel across the US frequently for competitions. All the teens at these competitions also seem to use Snapchat as their primary messaging app. When she meets competitors from other places that she wants to stay in touch with it is Snapchat ids that they exchange.

I have relatives in age 17-20 and they use snapchat a lot, and have not abandoned it for something newer and cooler. Some use tiktok, but I think it's more for entertainment. Snap is for connecting with their real life friends. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if it has the least churn in its category.

Social media company perceptions are skewed by hype cycles. For instance, snap has more DAUs than Twitter (plus bots likely inflate Twitters numbers more), but everyone talks about Twitter as if it's a giant that everyone uses. It's important to look at the data sometimes, and not just high profile drama.

I do not see the same behavior among this age group/younger, I see many people give out their snap in lieu of giving out their phone number to strangers, I've seen snap become more of a non-committal peer-to-peer temporary messaging app with people met in a casual setting (ie dating apps)

Anecdotal as well. Also 22.

Moved from PR to WA for a couple months to intern alongside others my age. Everybody used Snapchat. It was the group message app of choice.

Back home, people still use it for keeping up with close friends via stories and whatnot. And, y’know, the other stuff Snapchat is great for.

I know people in high school and early college who are using Snap heavily, even over Instagram. In fact, many of them have zero Instagram posts and simply use it as a group messenger.

Anecdotally, what is the app of choice for this cohort if they've moved away from Snap?

TikTok, presumably?

Based on my kids' usage, TikTok is for passive consumption, whereas Snapchat seems to be primarily a messaging service with content as a sideshow.

So if Snapchat stopped existing tomorrow they'd probably move to iMessage. Until one of their friends gets an Android.

TikTok isn’t a messaging app, though.

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