Tumblr Tops List of Social Media Services Used by Teens

Photo Credit: fanpop.com ; 24.media.tumblr.com

Teenagers these days love to post and click more photos than text when they use the Internet. That’s the revealing (and to some, the obvious choice) outcome revealed by a formal survey conducted among U.S. teens’ use of social networks where Instagram and Snapchat are the latest darlings to emerge and their most preferred site is Tumblr.

Prompted by the informal interview by Branch co-founder Josh Miller to his teenage sister about how she uses technology, Y Combinator partner and Posterous cofounder Garry Tan used polling service Survata to survey 1,038 respondents, divided to two age groups (those aged 13-18 and 19-25), about the frequency of their social media use.

Here are the key takeaways of the study:

• Based on the Survata report, the 13-18 years old dominate the use of these social media services than those in the 19-25 years old bracket.

• The Snapchat service is used by 13% of 13-18 years old than the 4% of the 19-25 years old. While not yet popular in Asia, the percentage of usage by teens of this less-than-a-year app, not to mention almost zero media exposure, is remarkable.

• Instagram is used nearly twice as many than by adults where the younger demographics who used the photo sharing site reached the 21% figure than the 11% of the older age bracket.

• Tumblr topped the list of social media services being used by teens and adults (where 61% of 13-18 years old and 57% of the 19-25 age braket are using the blog service), even surpassing the largest socal networking Facebook.

Tan agreed that the observation made by Miller was true about the remarkable usage among the younger generation of the latest digital services. Tan observed that the latest phenomenon on Snapchat/Instagram spells out the dynamics of the inevitability that new social behaviors can and will emerge at a time that we least expect it.

Is it goodbye Facebook and hello to Instagram and Snapchat now? While this result may still be premature, social media strategies and media planning tactics by digital and interactive agencies can learn a thing or two from the latest results. Online web marketing specialists might as well gather insights about the how the younger segment of the society is using the social web in order to seize the larger opportunities offered by these social web platforms.

So what do you think of this study? Let us know in the comments box below.