Trends move both up and down. Are you aware that the top trending apps are now moving down? People are getting bored of Facebook and Instagram, a study says

After a few years of having your private thoughts and pictures splattered all over the internet, and realizing you were stupid enough to put it out there yourself for everyone to laugh at Forever, you suddenly are craving a bit of privacy. Yes, let the younger generation plaster their lives all over the internet and lose out of employment, social standing, events and so much more in later life.

The newly shy, publicity rejecting internet users are abandoning Facebook and Instagram in droves for more private apps such as WhatsApp and Telegram, according to new research.

The study, which analyzed time spent on four social networking apps including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Snapchat, found that Instagram showed the biggest drop in global usage, down 23.7% year-on-year.

Twitter usage was next, down 23.4%, Snapchat 15.7% and Facebook by 8%.

At 10 years old, Twitter has become the least popular of all the apps, while Facebook was still most used. People still spend an average of 34 minutes in its app daily. Its closest rival was its own app, Instagram at 17 minutes of daily use. Now, add that up, with these four apps alone the average person spends an average of over an hour every day…aside from constant texting and emails and Skype and calls.

In the UK, Instagram saw the biggest drop in use over the last year, while Snapchat was unusually popular: Britons are the third-most prolific Snapchatters, spending an average of 15 minutes on the ephemeral chat app every day.

Researchers at web analytics company SimilarWeb tracked activity on hundreds of thousands of Android phones from January to March 2016 and compared it with the same period in 2015. Anonymous users from nine countries, including the UK, France, Germany, Spain, Australia, India and Brazil were studied. Note that the U.S. was not involved. Americans are still enduring the “Device Zombie” Apocalypse.

The reason for this drop in social media use could be two-fold, according to data analyst Pavel Tuchinsky, who authored the report.

Firstly, there are a slew of smaller, more niche social media apps such as livestreaming video app Periscope and encrypted messenger Telegram that are competing for users’ attention. Use of Telegram in the UK went up from 17 minutes last year to a current time of 24 minutes – more than 40pc growth.

“We see a trend towards privacy, and towards more individual communications,” Tuchinsky said. “Let’s take the growth of Telegram as an example. Also Whisper and Yik Yak where people can chat anonymously. It seems people are moving to more closed communities.”

There has also been a huge surge in popularity of messaging apps like WhatsApp, which have begun to replace public social networks. Together, the five biggest messaging apps – Whatsapp, Facebook Messenger, Viber, WeChat and Line – account for more than 3 billion accounts globally, with WhatsApp alone accounting for more than 1 billion users.

Whatsapp use in the UK is 27.5 minutes per session, second only to its parent app Facebook in popularity, and is installed on 54% of all Android phones.

Overall, there was also a 9% drop in the number of the big four social media apps installed on Android phones worldwide.

How should you react? If you were with BSG, you would know where to move and how. So, contact Blue Sand Group today to learn more about strategic internet moves.