TikTok’s hold on the social media industry is impossible to ignore: The video app and other visually oriented platforms thrive with key demographics.

Move over, millennials: The new kids in town, Gen Z, have claimed the crown as most sought-after demographic for brands. With their deep digital nativity and social influence, this generation is making its mark on society and brand strategy.

And the youthful skew of the Hispanic population yields a receptive audience for platforms like Snapchat and TikTok. Hispanics overindex for social user penetration, but just slightly. We estimate that 68.6% will be social users in 2021, vs. 64.4% of the total population.

Snapchat is still struggling to appeal beyond teens. While the platform continues to retain a healthy share of teens and young adults—its core demographic—it isn’t adding many more new users outside of these groups. Behind the Numbers: eMarketer's Forecast Methodology.

Brands have sought after millennials since the segment was identified as a demographic phenomenon reminiscent of the boomers. There’s been heavy investment in the creation of products and services that fit within an evolving consumer culture, one increasingly defined by this influential cohort. Growing independence and earning make this group the most digitally connected of all.

For comparison, Instagram will have 33.3 million users within the same demographic. Snapchat, meanwhile, is the leading social network in the US among Gen Z with 42.0 million users in the group this year. While it will maintain that position through 2025, TikTok will narrow the gap considerably by the end of the forecast period.

What Are the Biggest Europe Trends for Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, and Twitter in 2022? Facebook—long unchallenged as Europe’s biggest social network—is still expanding but showing its age. Instagram is its main rival in most countries, building on broad appeal across demographic groups.

Snapchat has less robust ad targeting options. Advertisers can target on Snapchat in multiple ways, such as by location, demographics, and interests, as well as using custom audiences. But platforms like Facebook and Instagram have more breadth and granularity of targeting criteria, which can be used to precisely define and deliver ads to a specific target audience.

This year, the 12-to-17 and 18-to-24 age groups will have the largest proportions of Snapchat users by far. TikTok likely follows a similar trajectory. More than half of UK adults (53%) ages 16 to 34 said they used TikTok—3 percentage points higher than those who said they used Snapchat, according to a Q4 2021 survey by Edison Research. Gen Zers aren’t financial heavyweights.

Snapchat will have 347.3 million users this year, up 16.1% year over year. Emerging markets, particularly India, will fuel these gains, while growth in core regions will be more modest.

Snap, Inc. Thrive Analytics. Vertebrae.

TikTok is now the third-largest worldwide social network, according to our inaugural forecast. It will have 60% more users than Snapchat and twice as many as Twitter this year.

As per the earlier justification for Facebook’s stasis, it’s more about what other platforms are doing than what Snapchat isn’t regarding user acquisition. That said, Snapchat’s relatively narrow UK demographic spread does work against it. For example, 12.3 million of its users will be ages 12 to 34 this year. Many in this age range had their heads turned toward TikTok during lockdowns.

Younger age demographics are also responsible for the shift away from Facebook and the growth in Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok. A broader array of social networks that cultivate specific audiences will lead to more fragmented social network usage in the years ahead.

TikTok is now the third largest social network in the US, ahead of Snapchat and Pinterest. Facebook won’t be able to stop the teen exodus, Instagram’s user base is growing older, and Twitter will start losing users.