Snapchat is stealing Instagram's teen users away

Business Insider / Michael Seto

Snapchat is absolutely crushing Instagram when it comes to teens, according to a new survey by investment bank Piper Jaffray.

In fall 2015, Piper Jaffray's semi-annual survey of 6,500 US teens showed that 33% of them considered Instagram their most important social network. By this spring, that number had fallen to 27%.

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The story for Snapchat is the complete opposite. In fall 2015, just 19% of teens said it was their most important social network. That ballooned to 28% this spring, edging out Instagram.

Twitter continued its slow decline, while Facebook saw a slight bump.

Here is what the full table looked like:

Piper Jaffray

There have been signs that Facebook, which owns Instagram, might not be happy with the recent performance of the photo-sharing app. Facebook in in the midst of completely shaking up the way Instagram shows you photos, switching to an algorithmic ranking (like Facebook's own news feed), instead of Instagram's current method of presenting photos chronologically.

And Facebook has certainly noticed Snapchat's success. Since reportedly trying to buy Snapchat for $3 billion, Facebook has introduced a slew of Snapchat-like features to its own apps, including visual "codes," the ability to doodle on photos, and plans for animated filters following Facebook's acquisition of MSQRD.

Here is another chart from Piper Jaffray that shows Snapchat's striking ascent among teens (the average age of respondents was 16.5 years).

Piper Jaffray