Instagram just surpassed Snapchat as the most used app among American teens, according to a new Wall Street survey (FB, SNAP)

Instagram travel tourism hotels selfie photo moment likes
Instagram travel tourism hotels selfie photo moment likes

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  • Instagram has surpassed Snapchat as the most used app among American teens surveyed by the investment bank Piper Jaffray.

  • The bank's latest semiannual survey of teens found that 85% of respondents said they used Instagram at least once a month, compared with 84% who said they used Snapchat the same amount.

  • Overall, Snapchat and Instagram were the two most used apps among the surveyed teens, with Twitter and Facebook trailing behind.

By one firm's measure, Instagram has beaten out Snapchat as the most used app among teens.

The investment bank Piper Jaffray released its annual "Taking Stock With Teens" report on Monday, which surveyed 8,600 teens from 48 states to estimate rising trends in fashion, entertainment, and technology. For the first time, Instagram surpassed Snapchat in terms of teen use.

The survey found that 85% of teens said they used Instagram at least once a month, while 84% said they used Snapchat at least once a month. This is the first time Instagram surpassed Snapchat in Piper Jaffray's survey dating back to spring 2016.

At the same time, Snapchat remained heavily favored among teen users: When asked what their favorite social-media platform was, 46% of teens chose Snapchat in the most recent survey, while 32% chose Instagram. Overall, Snapchat and Instagram were the two most used apps among the surveyed teens, with Twitter and Facebook trailing behind.

Snapchat has waned in popularity among all age groups recently, particularly after a redesign caused backlash among its users. In fact, shortly after Snapchat changed its design in February, roughly 1.2 million people signed an online petition pleading with Snapchat developers to undo the update. Snapchat decided to roll back some of the changes in May, and even Snap CEO Evan Spiegel acknowledged that the redesign affected Snapchat's user count.

Over the past several months, Instagram added features that seemed to copy Snapchat, like Stories and vanishing direct-message photos, but it seems to have been a boon for Instagram's user count: The company reported 1 billion active monthly users in June. Snapchat hasn't released its global monthly active users but reported 100 million monthly active users in the United States and Canada.

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