What's more, for the first time, both Snapchat and Instagram will gain the same amount of new users (1.8 million) this year under the age of 25. "This highlights the competition Snapchat now faces among their biggest age demographic," Bendtsen said.
What's Driving Snapchat's Growth?
"One major challenge to Snapchat’s future growth will be Instagram, in particular its Stories feature. Instagram says 400 million people per day now use Stories. That’s more than double Snapchat’s worldwide daily active user base," wrote principal analyst Debra Aho Williamson in a recent eMarketer report, Snapchat and Twitter 2018.
Interestingly, the proliferation of Stories, one of Snapchat's growth drivers, is being driven by adults ages 25 to 44—essentially those slightly older than the majority of Snapchat users.