Insta-nt karma?
Generation Z has spoken: Instagram is its social media platform of choice for the near future, not Facebook.
One year ago, it came to light that a consultancy group called Cambridge Analytica was harvesting data from millions of people’s Facebook profiles without their consent. Since then, our users — or bees — worldwide have regularly (voluntarily!) shared with us how they use social media and their changing attitudes towards different platforms.
We’ve already found that people still prefer to follow brands on Facebook, and that even when people don’t trust the platform, almost all of them (98%!) will continue to use it — and we collected all these insights together here.
Still, there’s so much to discover in this rapidly changing field: and now some time has passed, Business Insider asked us whether our younger bees (aged 18–25), based in the UK, US and India, had since changed their minds about Facebook. Here’s what they told us.
Losing face
First things first: while Facebook is still the most used platform for Gen Z, it’s not the most popular — Instagram is.
However, these preferences change substantially from country to country. In the UK — which, our previous research shows, tends to lead shifts in social media sentiment — Instagram is actually used by more of Gen Z than Facebook (89% vs 87%), and is much likelier to be the favourite platform (49% vs 18%).
In contrast, in the US, Facebook is still used by more of Gen Z than Instagram (86% vs 71%) and is still more popular (40% vs 25%). Meanwhile, India is different again: there, YouTube is used by nearly as many people as Facebook, and is actually more popular than both Facebook and Instagram:
So far, so unclear! So what’s really going on?
Who’s still using?
There’s huge divergence between countries in terms of levels of trust towards Facebook. In the UK — where Cambridge Analytica was based and where the impact of its activity was arguably most visible — only 39% of Gen Z say they do trust Facebook, while 36% say they don’t.
Whereas in India and the US, trust levels are far higher:
That difference has a big impact on usage. First, we found that in the UK, 1 in 3 Gen Zers said they are using Facebook less against a year ago, against only around 1 in 4 (26%) who use it more.
In India the trend is completely the other way around — 2 in 3 Indian 18–25s say they use Facebook more now, and only around 1 in 5 (19%) use it less.
Overall though, a solid 1 in 4 of our bees worldwide said they’re using Facebook less than they were. That doesn’t mean they’ve stopped using the platform completely — most of this group said they do still check Facebook — but they are using other platforms instead, and it’s Instagram that’s taking up the slack:
And here’s what some of our bees said about why they’re using Facebook less:
“There’s not enough engaging content. I realised I was on there not paying any attention and just scrolling through the newsfeed for the sake of it,” said a female bee, 25.
“Having the app on my phone took up a lot of time that I was wasting. I decided to delete it and now only use Facebook once a week on my laptop,” said a 23-year-old female bee.
“It’s become boring. Us teenagers have moved on to other social media apps like Instagram and Snapchat. Facebook is also filled with family members, so we have to censor most of the things we post there,” said a female, 19.
Thumbs down?
It’s not all doom and gloom for Facebook — for one thing, it does own Instagram, so at least its users are migrating from one of its platforms to another. In addition, we still found that 9 in 10 Gen Z check Facebook at least once a day, and often more — a very high adoption rate.
However, at Streetbees we’ve previously noticed that the UK — with its densely populated, digitally savvy population that quickly adopts new technology trends — tends to be at the forefront of change in this sector. If that is the case here, then we should expect Indian and US Gen Zers to follow the UK’s lead, and migrate their activity to the ‘hotter’ platform that is Instagram.
Or — maybe not? A lack of trust in Facebook is undoubtedly a bigger factor in the UK than it is elsewhere — so perhaps if the company can retain public trust in its other markets, it will be able to maintain relevance, while still encouraging people to use Instagram too.
The outstanding question that we’re yet to answer? How does Tiktok — the new short video platform currently undertaking a big advertising push in London, and elsewhere — shake things up, given its popularity in China and beyond. So far, it doesn’t really seem to be on our bees’ radar at the moment — Insta is definitely where it’s at — but if the cool kids in Gen Z decide that that’s no longer the case, this is a market that could change very quickly.
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A quick word on our methodology: The figures in the article are taken from Streetbees community members in the UK, US and India, carried out in Mar 2019. All of the data was collected by mobile and web surveys, and is accurate to within 5 percentage points 19 times out of 20.
