Gen Z: Instagram is Most Important; WhatsApp Is on the Horizon

Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and WhatsApp dominate the social media landscape among young tech-savvy Millennials and Gen Z, with Twitter, Snapchat, Facetime, Pinterest and other social tools battling for a place in their social ecosystem, according to a new study commissioned by MediaVillage.com and conducted by AnchorFree.  Instagram tops the list of 13 social media channels identified as most important to those born between 1996-2000 and post-2005, while YouTube is ranked as the top social channel by those born between 2001-2004, with Instagram ranked second (see data chart below).  The June 2017 U.S. survey among 1,019 tech-savvy young people clearly established Instagram as the favorite, with Facebook ranked first among those born pre-1990.  The study establishes WhatsApp as a highly competitive outlier in the social media ecosystem among the technologically sophisticated AnchorFree user base.