Teen Love for Snapchat Is Keeping Snap Afloat

Snapchat. “At this point it’s just the easiest way to contact everyone,” she wrote via text. “I use it if I’m trying to get them to respond.” All her friends have Snapchat, and they all check it more frequently than they do their text messages “(no matter how much I hate that lol).” Logan, who lives in Denver, says Snapchat conversations feel more intimate: “It is also just nice to see the faces of people.” Sometimes, she and her friends will just send pictures of their faces to each other. “It’s good to see them and adds a little more connection than a normal chat or DM,” she says.

Snapchat isn’t Logan’s favorite platform; she prefers Instagram because “it basically has all my passions.” But what’s a girl to do? If everyone is on Snapchat, then she has to be too. In one week, she’ll get close to 500 notifications from Snapchat, more than twice what she gets from iMessage and Instagram combined.

Written off by many after a disappointing stock-market debut and Facebook mimicry of its popular features, Snapchat remains a mainstay among youth. “You don’t have to speak words to talk to someone you want to stay connected with, as weird as that sounds,” Lily Klima, a 17-year-old from New York City, explains over text. A Pew Research poll from 2018 found that 69 percent of American teens aged 13 to 17 reported using the platform, trailing only YouTube and Instagram, and ahead of Facebook. More than one-third of respondents—35 percent—said they use Snapchat most often, more than any other social media platform. DaJauna Burnett-Hollins, 19, of St. Paul, says she spends up to two hours a day on Snapchat, and prefers it in part because she can “see [a friend’s] face and not just a screen.”

Thanks to those young, devoted users and investments in its Android app and better ad technologies, parent company Snap is riding a rare wave of investor optimism as it prepares to release its latest financial results Tuesday. Snap shares have more than doubled this year, though they remain below the $17 price of the company’s 2017 IPO. Analysts from Goldman Sachs, BTIG, and Bank of America all recently increased their price targets for Snap’s stock.

Snap beefed up its management team by adding Jeremi Gorman

Read More