10 Snapchat Statistics You Need to Know in 2023 [Infographic]

In the age of timelines and permanence, Snapchat offers a fresh and unique way of interacting with others. Where the norm was to have platforms where everything is saved and stored for later, Snapchat had something else in mind. 

Snapchat was quick to rise to fame, especially among the younger generation. Part of this success can be linked to Snapchat having something new to offer to its users. Snapchat has been a real pioneer in bringing augmented reality to its users through filters and interactive lenses. Notably, Snapchat had Stories before Instagram and Facebook. You could say Snapchat had Stories before it was cool. 

Snapchat is an image and video messaging app that was developed by Evan Spiegel, Bobby Murphy, and Reggie Brown in 2011. The app allows you to share multimedia messages that will “self-destruct” in up to 10 seconds.

When it comes to communication style, Snapchat mirrors how people interact with each other face-to-face. The interactions are temporary and not stored anywhere, much like real life. This enables users to share photos and videos that last a short time before they disappear forever- leaving no history that can come back to embarrass them later. 

And it wasn’t long before Snapchat caught the attention of brands and marketers. With the potential to reach out to younger audiences, Snapchat is a great platform if your target market consists of millennials and Gen Z’ers. 

These Snapchat statistics will help you understand where Snapchat currently stands and how profitable it could be for your business. 

So, let’s dive into the top 10 Snapchat statistics that you need to know about in 2023. 

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1. How Many People Use Snapchat?

The latest data shows that in Q2 2023, Snapchat had 397 million daily active users worldwide, defined as users who access the social media app at least once every 24 hours. This marked a 14 percent increase from the 347 million users it had the previous year (Snap Inc., 2023). In terms of Snapchat’s monthly active users, the most recent figure stands at 750 million. 

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The company credited this to the continued and sustained growth in the number of Snapchat users worldwide. Of the three regions it categorizes users into, the increase in North America was the slowest, rising by just two percent from Q2 2022. In comparison, the annual growth in the number of Snapchat users in Europe registered at nine percent.

The number of Snapchat users outside Europe and North America has been growing much faster than in these two regions.

In Q2 2023, the number of Snapchat users in the rest of the world grew a whopping 25 percent year-over-year to hit 202 million. In contrast, there were 101 million North American Snapchat users and 94 million in Europe in the same quarter.

2. Snapchat Demographics: Age

This next Snapchat statistic highlights just how popular the app is among the younger generations. Nearly six in ten, or 59 percent to be exact, of all U.S. internet users aged 13 to 24 years use the photo-sharing app (DataReportal, 2021).

In fact, it’s currently the most popular social network among teens, ahead of Instagram, Twitter, and even social media giant Facebook. 

Snapchat’s main demographic has long consisted of millennials and Generation Z users. Its creators understood what the younger generation wanted from social media platforms. With their target audience clearly specified from the beginning, they developed an understanding of the habits and preferences of this age group and created an app that gives them what they want.

The app’s popularity decreases as we move through the age groups. Just over one-fifth (21.5 percent) of U.S. internet users between 25 and 34 years old use Snapchat. That figure drops to less than one in eight for the 35 to 49 age group, and just four percent of Snapchat users are aged 50 and above.

3. Number of Snaps Created

According to the latest Snapchat statistics, over 5 billion Snaps are created every single day (Snap Inc., 2023). The cornerstone feature of Snapchat, Snaps are pictures or videos that users send to one another via the app and are deleted once viewed by their recipient(s). 

Snaps are immensely popular among Snapchat users, so much so that more than three out of every five Snapchatters who access the app every day create at least one Snap. Given the above-mentioned Snapchat statistic of 397 million daily active users, this extrapolates to around 238.2 million users of the Snap feature every day!

One of the platform’s most popular features is Snapchat streaks (or a Snapstreak, as it’s officially called). Users create Snapstreaks by creating and exchanging at least one Snap per day for consecutive days. This feature encourages users to constantly create Snaps, which boosts engagement, interaction, and user retention. You may be interested to know that the current record for the longest Snapstreak stands at 2,492!

4. Snapchat Mobile Usage

If your goal is to excel at Snapchat marketing, knowing how many people use Snapchat isn’t enough. It also helps to know how much time users spend on the app.

According to a recent report, Snapchat users spend an average of 31 minutes on the app daily (BroadbandSearch, 2022). As seen from one of the above statistics, Snapchat usage is highest among users aged 13 to 24. But that’s not all; this is also the age group that spends the most time on the app. 

Snapchat users are commonly described as being very “noisy,” which indicates their high level of activity on the application. They share pictures and videos and engage frequently, and many Snapchat users even access the app multiple times per day (more on this statistic later), which drives up mobile usage. 

Another point to keep in mind is that Snapchat users love using Snapchat filters. When it comes to cellular data, Snapchat data usage can be pretty high. This can explain why your mobile data usage is so high if you’re a heavy Snapchat user.

5. Snapchat Downloads

With more than 300 million downloads in 2020, it’s no surprise that Snapchat ranks as one of the most popular apps worldwide (Sensor Tower, 2021). Of all the apps that were downloaded last year, Snapchat ranks seventh. Ahead of it are TikTok, WhatsApp, Facebook, Zoom, Instagram, and Messenger. 

A big majority of Snapchat’s 2020 downloads came from Google Play. In fact, there were nearly five times more Snapchat downloads from Google Play than the Apple App Store. 

The difference is even more notable when we look at the top apps on the App Store and on Google Play in Q4 2020. Where Snapchat is the fifth-most downloaded app on Google Play during this period, it doesn’t feature even within the top 20 on the App Store.

The latest Snapchat statistics show that one-third of Snapchat’s total downloads in 2020 came from the fourth quarter alone. In Q4 2020, Snapchat was downloaded over 100 million times.

6. Number of Lenses Created on Snapchat

As previously mentioned, Snapchat’s Lenses are one of its users’ favorite features, and the numbers certainly prove it.

At the end of Q1 2020, Snapchat users had created more than 900,000 Lenses with Lens Studio. That’s an approximate 28.5 percent increase from the 700,000 at the end of the previous quarter. Fast forward less than three years and this number had more than tripled to over 3 million (Snap Inc., 2023). 

In fact, according to the company’s estimates, its users play around with Lenses billions of times per day. Aside from having fun creating content using Lenses, users also enjoy viewing such content, with top-performing Lenses on Snapchat receiving billions of views. 

Its popularity among users has led to brands adopting the feature to create content that better resonates with buyers—and to much success. Snapchat says that in the past two years alone, more than 250 million of its users have engaged with AR shopping Lenses more than 5 billion times. 

Building on the success of Snapchat Lens, the company is introducing a rewards program that will allow creators of top-performing Lenses to pocket up to $7,200 a month.

7. Snapchat Usage Frequency

Given the visual nature of Snapchat, its users are heavily reliant on their cameras, without which there probably wouldn’t even be Snapchat. The company estimates that the average daily active user accesses the Snapchat camera more than 20 times per day (Snapchat, 2020).  

That’s not surprising – considering that 95 percent of Snapchat users say using the app makes them feel happy. 

Snapchat’s power to entice users to socialize on the app is extremely strong. According to a study, the top reasons users use Snapchat include talking to friends, sharing photos, playing around with lenses and filters, and sharing videos. In comparison, most Twitter users use it to keep up with current events while most YouTube users hop on the platform to learn more about topics of interest. 

If you’re thinking of marketing on Snapchat in 2023, you may want to check out the latest Snapchat trends that the app itself is forecasting for inspiration and ideas!

8. Snapchat Daily Users

Here’s another Snapchat statistic about engagement: 59 percent of Snapchat users in the U.S. say they visit the app daily (Pew Research Center, 2021). In other words, three out of every five people in the U.S. who use Snapchat access the app at least once a day.

This puts Snapchat on par with Instagram, which also sees 59 percent of its users opening its app every day. Snapchat also beats out competitors YouTube and Twitter in this metric. 54 percent of YouTube and 46 percent of Twitter users access their apps daily. The only app with a higher percentage of its users opening the app every day is Facebook, with 70 percent.

Expanding this a little, we see that the percentage of Snapchat users accessing the app at least once a week is significantly lower. Just over one in five (21 percent) visits the app once a week.

9. Snapchat Discover Feature

Nearly half of Snapchat’s daily Discover viewers watch Discover every day of the week (Snapchat, 2019). 

On January 27, 2015, Snap Inc. announced the launch of Snapchat Discover. Snapchat Discover is a feature that provides users with up-to-date news on current events, pop culture, and more. The launch of Snapchat Discover repositioned Snapchat as a distributor of news as well as a social media app to stay in touch with others. Users can access the Snapchat Discover feature by opening the Snapchat app on a mobile device and swiping right twice. On the Discover screen, you can watch your friends’ Snapchat stories, but also publisher stories, various different shows, and Snapchat stories. 

Snapchat Discover gives users the option to view stories created by publishers and TV networks. Popular networks create disappearing Stories comprised of text, images, and video. In this way, Snapchat’s Discover feature gives Snapchat the means to monetize content that they display to their audience. 

Despite its popularity, Snapchat Discover faces competition from other social media platforms, like Facebook and YouTube, that offer news and video content to audiences. 

10. Snapchat Influencer Marketing

Almost 4 in 10 Snapchatters claim that they discover brands thanks to Snapchat celebrity endorsements and online posts (Globalwebindex, 2018). 

Even though Snapchat isn’t the best platform to encourage influencers, their presence on the channel has grown over the years. One of the main reasons why influencers find it hard to establish themselves on the social media platform is because there is no real middle ground where you can build up your followers. Influencers on Snapchat usually take photos of themselves using products and share these snaps on Snapchat. This works best when it doesn’t seem like actual adverts. In a way, Snapchat influencer marketing relies on word-of-mouth marketing. Brands are encouraging influencers to use their products and spread the word to their fans and followers. 

The important thing to keep in mind for Snapchat influencer marketing is to find a partner that can associate with your brand image. This approach isn’t just limited to Snapchat but to all types of influencer marketing campaigns, and can directly impact the success of your campaign. 

Conclusion: Snapchat Statistics

If anything these Snapchat statistics show us that Snapchat is here to stay. It has undergone a lot of growth in the past few years. And even though Snapchat saw a drop in users in 2018, it managed to make its way back out and get back on track in terms of revenue. In the coming years, Snapchat will continue to attract younger users, mainly millennials and Generation Z. And if that’s your target market, you know that Snapchat is the right place for your business to build a presence on. 

Summary: Snapchat Statistics 2023

 Here’s a summary of the Snapchat statistics for 2023:

1. As of Q2 2023, there are 397 million daily active Snapchat users worldwide.
2. 59 percent of all U.S. internet users aged 13 to 24 use Snapchat.
3. Over 5 billion snaps are created on Snapchat every day.
4. Snapchat users spend an average of 31 minutes per day on the app.
5. With 300+ million downloads, Snapchat was the seventh most popular app in 2020.
6. More than 3 million Lenses have been created by Snapchat users.
7. The average daily active user on Snapchat opens the app’s camera more than 20 times per day.
8. 59 percent of U.S. adults use Snapchat daily.
9. Nearly half of Snapchat daily Discover viewers watch Discover every day.
10. Almost 4 in 10 Snapchatters claim they discover brands thanks to Snapchat celebrity endorsements and online posts.

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