As of February 2025, one in five global Snapchat users were men between the ages of 18 and 24 years, whilst women of the same age made up 17.2 percent of all users, making this age group the photo app's main target market. Additionally, almost 20 percent of users were between the ages of 13 and 17 years. Overall, people over 35 years are substantially less likely to use Snapchat. Snapchat’s global users Snapchat has experienced significant increases in global audience size in recent years. In 2022, Snapchat had over *** million users, an increase of over *** percent when compared with the number of users in 2018. By 2027, it is estimated that *** million people will be using the app. As of January 2024, India was home to almost *** million Snapchat users, whilst the United States and Pakistan had *** million and ** million users, respectively. Snapchat+ subscription Snapchat released a paid version of the service in June 2022, offering pre-release and experimental features to those willing to pay **** U.S. dollars per month. As of the fourth quarter of 2023, around ***** million users were subscribing to Snapchat+. Snapchat is not the only social platform to have introduced a subscription option. Meta Verified, X/Twitter Blue, and Reddit also present advantages to users in exchange for a monthly charge.

As of the third quarter of 2020, 48 percent of U.S. internet users aged 15 to 25 years used photo sharing app Snapchat. Snapchat usage in the United States Since spring 2016, Snapchat consistently ranks as the most important social network for teenagers in the United States. In spring 2019, 41 percent of teenage survey respondents stated that the photo messaging app was their preferred social network. However, the popularity of Snapchat among its key user demographic is in decline and this also holds true for the general Snapchat audience in the United States. In 2018, 79.7 million U.S. users accessed the photo messaging app to communicate. This figure is projected to decrease to 78.1 million users in 2023. As of March 2019, Snapchat had a 26.3 percent mobile audience reach in the United States, ranking behind several competitors such as Facebook, Instagram and Facebook Messenger. In terms of monthly user engagement, Snapchat still ranked ahead of eternal rival Instagram but was trailing digital juggernaut Facebook and rapidly trending video sharing app TikTok.

Steady growth is forecast for Snapchat over the next four years in the United Kingdom. Having claimed a total of 15.6 million users nationwide in 2019, the video-based social media app is expected to hit 17.1 million users by 2024 – amounting to a total growth of 1.5 million users during this period.

Driven by Gen Z

Nearly 60 percent of Snapchat’s users are teenagers and young adults aged between 15 to 25 years - in other words, Gen Z, while the app’s second largest user base (about 20 percent) consists of Millennials up to 35 years of age. As a general trend, the use of social networks in the UK fell with increasing age despite a healthy 70 percent of 55 to 64-year-olds claiming to have social media profiles as of that same year.

Teens and young adults are most open to social media marketing

Gen Z is also relatively open toward social media marketing, with 44 percent of those surveyed in 2019 saying they followed brands on social media platforms for offers and discounts while a further 40 percent did so for product updates. When it came to the younger generation however, only 17 percent of those below 15 used Snapchat. Here, YouTube emerged as the top app of choice for 74 percent of those who responded.

Snapchat has a reach into 75% of the millenial and Gen Z audience.

Snapchat now boasts over 319 million daily active users. That means it’s one of the most engaging platforms. Snapchat currently has a total user base of 800 million.

As of the third quarter of 2020, over half of UK internet users aged 15 to 25 years were using multimedia messaging app Snapchat. By comparison, just 20 percent of those aged 26 to 35 years were using the social media app.

More women than men used Snapchat in Poland in 2023, with most users between the ages of 15 and 24.

The average Snapchat user spends just 3 hours per month on the app.

As of March 2021, male users in their 20s accounted for 15.7 percent of Snapchat's active user accounts in the United States. According to App Ape, women aged 20 to 29 years were the largest user group, accounting for 15.5 percent of the photo sharing app's user base on the Android platform. Snapchat stories and other features Released in 2011, Snapchat is now regarded as one of the earliest examples of mobile-first social media applications. The core feature of the platform is that messages and pictures are only available for a limited time before vanishing and becoming inaccessible. The app started out as a one-on-one messaging and photo sharing app, and now also a “Stories” function where users compile snaps into chronological storylines which are accessible to friends. Competitors Other social media platforms have also been quick to launch stories functions, the most successful among them being Instagram. The company reported 500 million daily active Instagram Stories users in January 2019. In comparison, Snapchat reported only 203 million daily active users worldwide in the second quarter of 2019. The corresponding figure for the latest quarter reported was 265 million. Messaging apps WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger have also successfully integrated stories into their product, chipping away at any unique features that Snapchat had claimed for itself. Other popular features of the Snapchat app include virtual stickers and various augmented reality (AR) objects and photo filters. In 2020, there were an estimated 43.7 million social network augmented reality (AR) users in the United States, a figure expected to surpass 48 million users by 2022.

This graph displays the share of French aged between 16 and 25 years old who used Instagram or Snapchat in 2018, broken down by age. It appears that 86 percent of the respondents aged 16-18 years old used Snapchat, while 59 percent of persons aged between 22 and 25 years old stated so.

In 2023, a survey was conducted in South Africa about the distribution of instant messaging applications among different age groups. It found that Snapchat users are predominantly in their youth. The age group with the highest share of users is 15 to 24 years old. This group constitutes approximately 25 percent of Snapchat users in South Africa.

As of the fourth quarter of 2023, 87 percent of women aged between 18 and 29 years in Norway were using social media app Snapchat. Overall, 77 percent of men belonging to this age group were also using the platform. Snapchat was less popular amongst those aged 60 years and older, with an average usage of 49 percent in this demographic. Additionally, the photo-based app proved more successful with women across all age categories.  Who uses social media the most?  A 2022 survey found that 86 percent of Norwegian women were Facebook users, as were 78 percent were men. Similarly, 71 percent of women and 54 percent of men in Norway used Snapchat users. In contrast, 31 percent of LinkedIn and 34 percent of men were Twitter users.  Snapchat in the Nordics  As of January 2024, Norway had the largest Snapchat reach among the Nordic countries, with more than 60 percent of its digital population reporting engaging with the video sharing platform. As of the fourth quarter of 2022, five out of every 10 Norwegian Snapchat users reported using it on a daily basis. Only four percent of the respondents claimed they used the messaging app monthly or less often.

As of April 2025, almost 32 percent of global Instagram audiences were aged between 25 and 34 years, and 29.5 percent of users were aged between 25 and 34 years. Overall, 16.3 percent of users belonged to the 35 to 44 year age group. Instagram users With roughly one billion monthly active users, Instagram belongs to the most popular social networks worldwide. The social photo sharing app is especially popular in India and in the United States, which have respectively 413.85 million and 171.7 million Instagram users each. Instagram features One of the most popular features of Instagram is Stories. Users can post photos and videos to their Stories stream and the content is live for others to view for 24 hours before it disappears. In January 2019, the company reported that there were 500 million daily active Instagram Stories users. Instagram Stories directly competes with Snapchat, another photo sharing app that initially became famous due to it’s “vanishing photos” feature. As of the first quarter of 2025, Snapchat had 460 million daily active users.

Snapchat was used mostly by young people of ages between 16 and 25 (91 percent of respondents) at the end of 2020 in Sweden. Furthermore, 58 percent of people aged between 26 and 35 used the platform that year. While 21 percent of the people interviewed used the app at least sometimes in 2015, this percentage grew to 42 in 2020. 22 percent of respondents used the platform on a daily basis. Snapchat use among those aged 26 and above however had increased in 2020.

 Snapchat wirldwide    

A survey conducted in 2018 found that there were over 260 million Snapchat users worldwide. It also presented a forecast for Snapchat usage up until 2022. In fact, over 356 million people were expected to use the app.

 Social Media in Sweden     

The overall usage of social media in Sweden grew significantly between 2010 and 2929. To be precise, 53 percent of people in 2010 and 89 percent of people in 2020reported to have used social media. Compared to other social media platforms, Snapchat stands third in the ranking. Following Facebook and Instagram, Snapchat was used by 42 percent of internet users in Sweden in 2020. Facebook ranked first on the daily social media usage list as well, with 61 percent of daily users in 2019, while Snapchat had 25 percent of daily users that year.

This statistic displays the daily use of photo social media apps in Australia as of July 2016, by age group. During the survey, 53 percent of consumers aged between 35 and 44 said they used Facebook, compared to only six percent of consumers in that age group that said they used Snapchat.

Snapchat was the most popular app among Swedish youth as of 2018, with over 80 percent of teenagers aged 13 to 18 years using the interactive platform. The corresponding figure for nine-to 12-year-olds was 45 percent. Instagram was also commonly used among Swedish children that year. Among younger children, social media was most common for Swedes aged ten. Over half of the children of this age group were on social media in 2018. In contrast, only six percent of six-year-olds in the country used social media in the evaluated period.
Internet access   The majority of Swedish children had a shared internet access with family members in 2018. Own internet access was most common among teenagers who were 17 or 18-years old that year, amounting to nearly one third of the respondents in that age group. In contrast, three percent of Swedes in the same age group had no internet access at all.

What do pupils think of internet?
As of 2018, most Swedish pupils considered internet important for both school and private life. Nearly 90 percent of high schoolers though the internet is important for personal purposes and over 90 percent found it important for school tasks.

According to a study conducted in March 2023, social video users aged between 15 to 24 in the United Kingdom (UK) spent 58 minutes per day on TikTok and 52 minutes per day on Snapchat. Overall, Facebook was the most used social platform, with users over 15 years spending 37 minutes per day on the network. Live streaming platform Twitch was used for just four minutes per day by UK users over 15 years of age.

As of April 2025, around 17.6 percent of global active Instagram users were men between the ages of 25 and 34 years. More than half of the global Instagram population worldwide was aged 34 years or younger. Teens and social media As one of the biggest social networks worldwide, Instagram is especially popular with teenagers. As of fall 2023, the photo-sharing app ranked third in terms of preferred social network among teenagers in the United States, following TikTok and Snapchat. Instagram was one of the most influential advertising channels among female Gen Z users when making purchasing decisions. Teens reported feeling more confident, popular, and better about themselves when using social media, and less lonely, depressed and anxious. However, social media can also have negative effects on teens, which can be much more pronounced on those with low emotional well-being. It was found that 35 percent of teenagers with low social-emotional well-being reported to have experienced cyber bullying when using social media, while in comparison only five percent of teenagers with high social-emotional well-being stated the same. As such, social media can have a big impact on already fragile states of mind.

This statistic shows the share of individuals who used Snapchat daily in Sweden in Q3 2020, by age group. The share of daily Snapchat users was third highest in 16 to 25 years age group (77 percent).

Code-switching is a well-researched phenomenon. However, little research has been conducted on code-switching in orally communicated advertisements on social media despite social media platforms witnessing the birth of many linguistic trends and having an impact on the linguistic behaviour of their users. To bridge this gap, the current study investigates the functions of Arabic-English code-switching in advertisements made by Saudi influencers on Snapchat. The data comprise 4000 words produced by 40 advertisers (20 male and 20 female, 100 words each). The advertisers, who belong to the same age group, advertised for a range of products and targeted mostly monolingual Saudi users of Snapchat. The sample produced 102 instances of switching from Arabic to English. The most common function in the data consisted of switching for availability (n = 78), but other functions were observed (quotation n = 9, specifying addressee n = 5, interjection n = 7, reiteration n = 1, and message qualification n = 2). The potential reasons for the higher frequency of switching for availability are discussed, and venues for future research are suggested.