With Facebook skewing toward older users, what are the social networking and messaging services drawing younger people? Here’s a look at the top social app trends for teens. Snapchat isn’t just a media-sharing app. You can even use it to send money to your friends. Privacy, sexting, and screenshot saving have posed some issues for Snapchat, but it remains one of the hottest apps with teens. While Instagram is primarily used as an app on iOS and Android devices, it’s also possible to view your account via a web browser. Instagram also makes it easy and seamless to merge your Instagram and Facebook social lives. For example, you can direct message your Facebook friends through Instagram or find Facebook friends who are also on Instagram to follow. WhatsApp boasts 1.5 billion users as of early 2021, and the app’s users aren’t just texting. WhatsApp also lets you post status updates, send videos, share your location, and make voice and video calls over the internet. The platform is completely isolated from Facebook, so teens don’t need to worry about the two overlapping. WhatsApp is compatible with Android phones, iPhones, Macs, and Windows computers. Instagram users sometimes list Kik usernames in the bios so that other Instagrammers have another way to contact them privately. All the texts and phone calls are encrypted through Telegram, and you can send absolutely any file type you want, even large ones up to 1.5 GB. This is unique to most messaging apps that support image and video files. The messages are synced across all supported devices because the messages and files are stored in the cloud. You can delete texts whenever you want and make secret chats that dissolve messages on a timer. You can also address up to 5,000 of your closest friends in one single group message. Telegram is available on iOS, Android, Windows Phone, Windows PC, Mac, and Linux. The web version lets you access Telegram from any computer without installing the software. Users can get on Twitter from their computer, phone, or tablet. See all the different ways you can use Twitter on its apps page. Like Snapchat and Instagram, Tumblr is largely dominated by visual content and has become a favored platform for animated GIF sharing. Although it allows its users to create blog posts in all sorts of formats, including text, audio, quote, and dialogue, it’s the visual content that makes time spent on Tumblr worth it. Tumblr can be downloaded on Android and iOS. It also works through a web browser. You can use this service on the web and through the ASKfm mobile apps.
