Social media from a British teenagerâs perspective

A few weeks ago, Lewis, a 16-year old teenager living in the UK, spent a few days with Blonde Digital’s team in London as part of a mini summer internship. Inspired by Andrew Watt’s Medium post back in January, we asked him to write down his thoughts on social media, which platforms and apps he and his friends tend to use (and what for) and which ones are becoming dated and less relevant to his generation.

He came back to us with a very insightful blog piece that, among other things, talks about Facebook and how it’s slowly dying among his peer group, Snapchat and Instagram and why teenagers love them, as well as messaging apps and why Whatsapp is not that useful for him and his friends.

Lewis made some very interesting points in his blog and there are many useful takeaways for UK brands, especially for those looking to develop social media plans that engage Gen Z and drive interactions among this age group.

Here are a few of our favourite quotes:

"Years ago I could not imagine Facebook diminishing in popularity, if anything the contrary, however, for me now, Facebook just is not useful."

"I maybe check Instagram, then Snapchat more than once an hour if I’m not busy. When I wake up too, the absolute first thing I do is check my Instagram and Snapchat."

“Now, if you want to go post a status, you post it on a Snapchat story or Twitter (I think Snapchat is more popular, with my friendship group at least) and if you are posting a photo you put it on Instagram.”

"Snapchat is uncluttered and efficient, getting the information you want quickly."

"Whenever I read any news about social media platforms, I am always surprised by how popular messaging applications other than Facebook and Snapchat are."

"Snapchat provides you with a platform to be confident in what you post as it’s not permanent."

On Instagram:

“I like how only one image is on the screen at once, I think this places more significance on each photo, making it more appealing, rather than the four or so photos you can get on your interface at once on Twitter or Facebook.”

You can find Lewis’ full blog post here.