Facebook is scared teens will abandon Instagram

(Source: Kate Torline / Unsplash)

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Despite Instagram’s efforts, adolescents prefer 2 concurrent applications.

• Even though Instagram gained users during the pandemic, the app is only the 3^e favorite social media of American teens, according to a recent poll for US investment bank Piper Sandler.
• Snapchat is the most popular, with 35% of teens preferring it. TikTok follows at 30%. Only 22% prefer Instagram.

Facebook tries to attract teens to Instagram, an app she acquired in 2012.

In 2016, Instagram copied a key Snapchat feature, Story, which allows users to capture short videos and photos and post them as visible status for just 24 hours.

• But, in an internal presentation from the summer of 2017, Instagram noted that college-aged students were the fastest to adopt the Stories feature, followed by 15-19 year olds.
• Teenagers aged 13 to 15 had used this function very little.

Facebook also plans to introduce children to Instagram.

• Last spring, internal documents obtained by Buzzfeed News revealed that Instagram was working on an under-13 version.
• A series of articles from Wall Street Journal later revealed that Facebook is well aware of Instagram’s potential negative effects on children’s mental health.

Faced with the outcry of negative reactions to his project, Facebook announced last month that it was putting it on the ice, without canceling it. [détails].

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