Tumblr More Popular Among Youngsters than Facebook: Survey

If you want to reach consumers under the age of 20 and still think Facebook is the best method — think again. According to a recent survey carried out by Y Combinator’s Garry Tan and one of their sponsored startups, Survata, on average, kids aged 13-18 and burgeoning adults aged 19-25, Tumblr is used for more hours than Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat.

If you haven’t heard of Tumblr and why you should be on it, I mean, other than this survey, you should check out this recent post we had on why the micro-blogging platform is so so so important for small businesses.

In fact, I would wager that Tumblr’s audience (folks surfing pages) love the platform for the same reasons its users (folks maintaining pages) do: It’s incredibly easy to use, offers lots of different layouts and sharing content with your network is seamless.

But Facebook still has some life in it, according to the survey. As Survata Cofounder Aaron Wenger noted: “[Facebook] usage levels were higher among 13-18yr olds than 19-25yr olds for every social network. The biggest differences were for Snapchat (13% for 13-18yr olds vs 4% for 19-25yr olds) and Instagram (21% vs 11%)."

So what does this mean? Well, Tan concludes: 

Perhaps the most heartening observation from the Snapchat/Instagram phenomenon is that new social behaviors can and will happen. For a time the door may have seemed closed. Yet Flickr sprung out of nowhere in 2002 when nobody else believed in consumer web. Ten years later, it might be deja vu all over again.

I would add to that that you can’t simply just be lazy, pick one social media horse and stick to it infinitely. You would be surprised how little major companies know about social media — they were caught with their pants down years ago betting on the Internet being a fad and are scrambling to catch up. You, as a smaller business, are much more nimble and can afford to keep a tighter grip on the pulse of what’s going on and adapt accordingly.

So, if this is your audience: Heed.

Oh, and read more about Tan’s findings here on his blog.

David Wolinsky is a freelance writer and a lifelong Chicagoan. In addition to currently serving as an interviewer-writer for Adult Swim, he's also a comedy-writing instructor for Second City. He was the Chicago city editor for The Onion A.V. Club where he provided in-depth daily coverage of this city's bustling arts/entertainment scene for half a decade. When not playing video games for work he's thinking of dashing out to Chicago Diner, Pizano's, or Yummy Yummy. His first career aspirations were to be a game-show host.

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