Snapchat's teen fans wince as app catches on with their folks

An estimated 14% of US smartphone users, who are 35 or older, are on the messaging app

Paris Zeikos says he noticed a surprising trend on Snapchat. Parents have started creeping onto the messaging app, a social-media outlet long dominated by teens.

“It’s kind of shocking,” said Mr. Zeikos, an 18-year-old university student in Manchester, England. “Most people who use Snapchat are in my generation, so it’s bizarre to see someone older use Snapchat.”

Since its founding five years ago, Snapchat has become a digital mecca for high school and college-age students, allowing them to send photos and videos that disappear in a matter of seconds. It has amassed 150 million daily active users, said a person familiar with the matter.

Snapchat also has been a refuge from parents. Until lately, that is.

Now, the “olds” are arriving in force, whether they are parents spying on their kids, or professionals trying out another social-media platform.

An aging demographic is inevitable for many apps that first catch fire with teens. Whether Snapchat can maintain its fanatical teen base, which is popular with advertisers, while at the same time broadening its appeal beyond youth, will have major ramifications for the app, which investors value at $16 billion.

It can mean the difference between achieving massive scale like Facebook Inc., the social-network juggernaut that has 1.6 billion users and is valued at $330 billion, or remaining a large niche service like Twitter Inc., a once-formidable rival that has lost three-fourths of its market value as its growth has stagnated.

On Twitter, teens now routinely complain about parents joining Snapchat—”Lmao I’m so done my friends parents got snapchat,” tweeted Mr. Zeikos in May. How-to guides for bewildered adults are cropping up all over the web to help them navigate Snapchat.

A recent comScore report declared that Snapchat is “breaking into the mainstream,” estimating that 38% of U.S. smartphone users ages 25 to 34 are on Snapchat, and 14% of those 35 or older. Three years ago, those numbers were 5% and 2%, respectively.

The trend resembles the way parents jumped on the Facebook bandwagon years after it was adopted by college students. In 2013, as teens began flocking to other apps like Snapchat, Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg remarked that “coolness is done for us.” Facebook still prospered by embracing all ages, churning out a $3.7 billion profit last year.

“In order to really get true growth that can be monetised, you’ve got to be appealing to more age groups which can kind of alienate the teens,” said Gene Munster, an analyst at Piper Jaffray, which conducts a semiannual survey of teens’ social-media use. Snapchat may be less susceptible to a teen exodus than Facebook, however, because the communication it allows is more closed off, says Amanda Lenhart, a researcher at the Data and Society Research Institute in New York. On Facebook, people mostly post photos and video to their broader group of friends, and they must manually delete the posts. Snapchat is centred around a camera, encouraging users to send disappearing photos and videos to one recipient at a time.

Users can choose to share with a wider group through Snapchat Stories, a visual diary of their day that expires after 24 hours. And, because the app has no “likes” or “comments,” there’s less outright judgment on Snapchat.

The app’s privacy and spontaneity resonate with teens like Jeremiah Broadway, an 18-year-old college student in Minneapolis, who says he watches his friends’ Snapchat Stories each day. About 69% of U.S. smartphone users age 18 to 24 are on Snapchat, up from 24% in 2013, according to comScore, which doesn’t track users younger than 18.

It isn’t clear whether Snapchat can attract enough adults to transform itself into an Internet utility like Google is for search, Amazon is for shopping and Facebook is for social networking.

Snapchat, based in Venice, Calif., says it welcomes the influx of older users. “Our community enjoys having their parents on Snapchat because it’s a really fast and fun way to communicate,” a spokeswoman said. “We don’t have the public likes and comments that often make for awkward moments on traditional social media. It’s never been an issue,” she added.

In the past year Snapchat has added new features and media partnerships as it builds its burgeoning advertising business. The company expects revenue to reach as much as $300 million this year, up from $60 million last year, according to a person familiar with the matter.

In March, Snapchat redesigned the app to let users make audio and video calls and send voicemails—essentially turning it into an all-in-one communication tool. Snapchat also has worked to build a robust news section with publishers as diverse as Cosmopolitan, Vice and The Wall Street Journal. And celebrities from Lady Gaga to Ryan Seacrest use it to offer glimpses into their lives.

The enhancements are attracting users like Cathi Crismon, a 60-year-old professional blogger who says she joined Snapchat a few months ago to stay connected and promote her blog.

Mrs. Crismon, an avid Facebook user, says she isn’t interested in the feature most favored by Snapchat’s younger users, namely its filters and lenses, which allow users to distort or swap faces with another person in a photo, or dress up a selfie with dog ears. Instead, she likes reading stories from National Geographic, though she’s still deciding whether to stick with Snapchat. “It’s confusing,” she said. “I’m still learning the ropes.”

Another new user, Stephanie Marchbanks, joined Snapchat to learn what keeps her teenage son Timothy glued to his phone. She says she shows her kids how to use features like adding stickers to a video.

“I put a cat filter on my face,” said the 56-year-old freelance writer, referring to a Snapchat photo she recently sent to her daughter. Mrs. Marchbanks, who says keeping up with Facebook’s “noisy commentary” is exhausting, has been unsuccessful convincing her friends to join Snapchat. “They think, ‘Stephanie, oh, she’s a big kid,’” Mrs. Marchbanks said.

As for her son’s reaction to Mrs. Marchbanks being on Snapchat: “It’s weird.”

Source: The Wall Street Journal