comScore: 38% of US smartphone users ages 25 to 34 are on Snapchat, 14% for those 35 and older, versus 5% and 2% respectively three years ago
An estimated 14% of U.S. smartphone users 35 or older are on messaging app — Paris Zeikos says he noticed a surprising trend on Snapchat.
Context & Ripple Effects
Snapchat's audience is aging up fast. A year after the company claimed 60% of US smartphone owners aged 13-34 as active users, comScore's new numbers show the app breaking out of its youth niche: 38% of 25-34s and 14% of users 35+ are now on it, versus 5% and 2% three years earlier.
That trajectory matters because the rest of the coverage cuts both ways: App Annie found [[a:918666|35% of Snapchat users can't be found on Facebook and 46% not on Instagram on an average day]], meaning its reach isn't substitutable — while eMarketer's later forecast points to an outright US user decline, making this 2016 broadening the high-water mark of the growth story.
First-order effects
- Snapchat gains a multi-generational sales pitch to brand advertisers, who previously had to treat it as a teens-and-young-adults buy; the 35+ cohort tripling from 2% to 14% gives media buyers a reason to include it in general-market plans.
Second-order effects
- Facebook and Instagram face pressure to counter a rival whose audience overlaps theirs less than assumed — App Annie's overlap data suggests advertisers can't simply reallocate Snapchat budgets to Meta properties and reach the same people.
Third-order effects
- If the aging-up pattern held, Snapchat would follow the classic path of youth-launched networks becoming mainstream utilities; but eMarketer's subsequent forecast of a 2.8% US user decline to 77.5M in 2019 shows the broadening did not translate into durable total-user growth, leaving the structural outcome genuinely unresolved.
The trend: Social networks launched on young cohorts age up with them — Snapchat's jump from 5% to 38% among 25-34s is one data point in the broader migration of youth-first platforms into general-audience territory.