Social Media App Use on a Decline

Social media has been one of the largest growing industries in the 21st century. While some giants, such as Facebook and Twitter, seem like they are here to stay, others have been lost to time. Does anyone remember MySpace?

Smartphones have also been a massive player in the technology industry. According to a report by Pew Research Center, they have become the third most-used method to access the internet behind desktop and laptop computers. Therefore, a social media decline is something that no one would expect to see, however, this drop is one of truth.

A June 6 report by CNBC revealed that social media mobile app use is declining, not growing. They used theresearch of marketing intelligence agency SimilarWeb to come to this conclusion.

“People are spending less time on social media apps, in some cases substantially less,” said the report.

The popular photo-sharing app Instagram took the biggest toll, losing roughly 24 percent of its usership. However, Twitter and Snapchat were shockingly close behind, declining roughly 23 percent and 16 percent respectively.

Despite larger declines in Instagram and Snapchat usage, Twitter received the least overall usage this year when compared to the most popular social media apps.

With social media also serving as a massive economic industry, the stock market was also affected by this usage drop. Twitter stock trading dropped by a whopping 34 percent.

In some countries, including the U.S. and England, installations of social media apps have been on a rise, which gives hope for the mobile sector of the industry.

It’s interesting that, in an age so dominated by social media and citizen journalism, mobile usage is dropping. This is a trend that should be kept an eye on, as it may re-shape our era once more. Read More