Instagram-TikTok Battle Intensifies As New Rivals Emerge Like Mushrooms

TikTok’s popularity with teens in the U.S. is rising but Meta Platforms Inc.’s META Instagram is still a dominant force in social media.

What Happened: Piper Sandler's Fall 2022 Survey revealed that ByteDance-owned TikTok is widening the lead as U.S. teens' most favorite social media platform. Of those surveyed, 38% voted in favor of TikTok, compared to 33% in Spring 2022. It was followed by Snapchat Inc.'s SNAP Snapchat (30%) and Instagram (20%). 

Instagram, though, continued to reign supreme when it came to higher social media engagement at 87%, followed by Snapchat and TikTok at 83%. 

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BeReal, a new-age social media app that encourages users to take a photo every day to create a daily habit, is in the sixth position with 34% after Twitter Inc.'s TWTR namesake app and Pinterest. 

An average U.S teen spends 4.4 hours per day on social media, up from 4.2 hours during the last survey. 

Why It's Important: In September, Meta's internal document revealed that on Instagram "most Reels users have no engagement whatsoever" and the platform has struggled to recruit people to create content. The report said that users spend less than one-tenth of their time watching Reels compared to spending time on TikTok. 

The platforms face direct competition from new and fast-emerging social media apps like BeaReal and Gas, a new-age teen app.

BeReal was in the first position in Apple Inc.'s AAPL U.S. App Store downloads chart compared to TikTok's fourth and Instagram's fifth place, whereas Gas surpassed Facebook and WhatsApp in popularity on iPhones. 

Read Next: Meta's Instagram Is Now Testing A Feature Inspired By A Smaller Rival