Social

Infographic: The Inevitable Shift of Snapchat Demographics

Don’t be surprised if you see your mom on Snapchat using that (somewhat terrifying) bumblebee filter.

While the chat app’s user base still skews young—70 percent are millennials and 30 percent of teens rank Snapchat as their most important social network—its older audience is growing at a rapid pace.

As this infographic from Mediakix points out, the number of Snapchat users aged 25 and up is increasing twice as fast as the number of users under 25. In fact, 50 percent of new users are 25 or older.

That’s right, just when you thought you had a grasp on Snapchat’s audience, it goes and changes up on you. But before anyone gets frustrated, just remember that there’s precedence for a shift like this. Facebook first emerged as a platform exclusively for college students, and eventually expanded to include everyone 13 and up. According to Pew Research Center, 72 percent of adult U.S. internet users are now on the social network. While Snapchat never had a college age limit, it shouldn’t be too surprising that it’s starting to gain wider popularity—especially now that it’s “breaking into the mainstream” and targeting the 35+ crowd.

As Kevin Del Rosario, associate director of social media at Huge, a digital agency, told The Los Angeles Times, “Almost everyone I talk to, it’s their niece that shows them Snapchat. Then they start seeing how it works.”

The snowballing effect seems to be working. Fifty percent of users return to the app every day. And here’s a special item just for marketers: According to the infographic, 60 percent of college students would purchase from a brand if they received a coupon on Snapchat. That has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it? Maybe that’s why Instagram just copy-and-pasted Snapchat’s unique content format onto its own app.

For more about Snapchat’s morphing demographics, check out the infographic below.

Image by Mediakix

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