Instagram Is A Youth Favorite

Piper Jaffray & Co. has released its semi-annual “Taking Stock With Teens” survey, and the results suggest that teens are leaving Facebook in favor of a Twitter + Instagram combination. An infographic, released as part of the survey report, shows that Instagram tops the list of social networking sites for teens with Twitter second and Facebook third.

The research covers many other teen habits, such as online shopping and their mobile phone of choice, which is the iPhone at 67 percent. It even has a section on eating habits. Taking into account geographical diversity, the survey spanned 41 U.S. states, an average age of 16 years old and an average household income of $59,000.

Seventy-six percent of the 7,200 teens surveyed list Instagram as their social network of choice. This could indicate that teens prefer visual representations of their “status”to verbal ones. Interestingly, they seem to prefer sending Instagram photos via Twitter over Facebook, which is not necessarily bad news for Facebook, Inc., since the company also owns Instagram. Nevertheless, 45 percent usage among teens could be enough to make Facebook consider some countermeasures to recover those lost users.