Is Instagram More Popular than Snapchat?

Facebook (FB) acquired Instagram in 2012, and since then, the company’s user base has been expanding, rising to 1 billion monthly users at the end of June 2018 from 600 million in late 2016.

Instagram’s lighter version, Instagram Lite, has targeted more users in the fast-growing emerging markets. According to KeyBanc analyst Andy Hargreaves, Instagram will likely reach 1.4 billion monthly users by 2020.

According to Piper Jaffray, Facebook’s photo-sharing service, Instagram, had the edge over Snap’s (SNAP) Snapchat in its fall 2018 survey of the most popular and highly used social platforms among teenagers. According to the survey, which was released on October 22 and was reported by CNBC, ~85% of teens use Instagram once a month compared to the 84% who use Snapchat. Facebook’s engagement, on the other hand, is just 36% among teens, down from 52% two years ago.

Instagram is also the most preferred social media platform for brand engagement among nearly 70% of teenagers, while Snapchat is preferred by just over 40% of teens, according to Piper Jaffray.

Kids aged 12 to 17 have been switching from Facebook to Instagram, Google’s (GOOGL) YouTube, and Snapchat. According to a recent report by eMarketer, ~68.0% of young Internet users are expected to use Snapchat by the end of 2018, more than those that use Facebook and Instagram at 47.2% and 43.6%, respectively.