If Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was throwing a party, young people would rather go to Snap CEO Evan Spiegel’s place instead.
Two million users under 25 will abandon Facebook in 2018, according to a new study from eMarketer. At the same time, Snapchat will add roughly 1.9 million users, while Facebook-owned Instagram will grab about 1.6 million.
With Facebook being pegged as the social platform where older relatives hang out, less than half of Americans between ages 12-17 will use Facebook for the first time this year. This is a boost to Snapchat, which hasn’t become a digital hangout for parents in the same way. However, its recent redesign aimed to make the app “easier to use,” as Spiegel put it, which will allow it to add more users, albeit older ones.
“Snapchat could eventually experience more growth in older age groups since it’s redesigning its platform to be easier to use,” said eMarketer analyst Debra Aho Williamson in a statement Monday.
“The question will be whether younger users will still find Snapchat cool if more of their parents and grandparents are on it. That’s the predicament Facebook is in.”
If this trend sounds familiar, that’s because eMarketer put out a study six months ago showing Snapchat was more popular than Facebook with users aged 12-17 in the States. Many are “Facebook nevers” or kids that bypass the social network altogether. Facebook is working to win back some of those lost Gen Z’ers, introducing a “Messenger for Kids” app.
Even so, Facebook still has a huge lead when it comes to overall users, with more than 1.4 billion people using the social network each day. Snapchat just reported it has 187 million daily active users.