OUR TAKEAWAYS FROM THE TOP APPS BY AGE GROUP IN Q4 2025
The TL;DR: After reviewing the Sensor Tower State of Mobile 2025 report’s ranking of top apps by generation from Q4 2025, the DC Social Dept. discussed the patterns and identified how factors like holiday shopping, creator monetization, and shifting cultural behaviors shaped platform performance: from YouTube’s broad dominance, to Facebook’s persistent relevance, and TikTok’s uneven demographics.
As chronically online individuals, the screenshot above showing the ranking of mobile apps by share of audience in Q4 2025 raised a few eyebrows in our dept. Notably, YouTube is the #1 most popular app for everyone, Facebook was more popular last quarter with 18-24 than TikTok, and apparently people are still using Snapchat?
After sitting down and discussing these findings, we gathered the takeaways from our conversation below, including why into why some apps spike or decline by age group, seasonal trends, and how creator monetization, platform features, and cultural behaviors factor in.
YouTube’s generational dominance: First, the elephant in the room: YouTube is #1 across the board, and it’s not a purely social network. Widely seen as the new “TV,” YouTube’s combination of long‑form watches, vertical Shorts, and hours of music, podcast, and talk shows makes it the most universal app across generations — the real “everything” app (sorry, X.)
Facebook’s unexpected strength: We noted that Facebook is still rising higher than Instagram for those 35+ and ranked surprisingly high for 18-34. We surmised that thrifty, younger users see Facebook Marketplace and associated groups (like apartment and roommate hunting ones) as the main draw, meaning they are consuming less content from brands in feeds on the platform even though they make up a large user base. Meanwhile, older gens still maintain high activity on the platform so they make up more of the engagement on actual social posts.
TikTok’s uneven demographic footprint: Appearing primarily in the 18–24 and 55+ groups, this wide gap in TikTok usage by age brought up a few possible causes. Given this data is from Q4 2025, uncertainty around bans or ownership changes caused creator migration and regular users to exit the platform. Mixed trust and use of AI by generations and platform fatigue also came up as reasons why TikTok may have dropped off, as it’s notably unseated by ChatGPT in groups aged 35-54.
Pinterest’s strong Gen Z skew: Though historically viewed as millennial territory, Pinterest shows up only for 18–24 users in this dataset, which also surprised us. We see younger gens more and more looking to “curate” their lives, including vision boarding and setting seasonal habits (like “ winter arcs” or January goal‑setting). We also noted that Pinterest’s strong creator payouts may be driving more young creators there.
Shopping Apps Over Social: Apps like Amazon, Walmart, and Venmo appear in multiple generational groups, many way above social networks, which may have been due to Q4 holiday shopping. That also led us to discuss Venmo’s payment feed as an alternative social app — yes, “scrolling” culture on Venmo is a thing (and, apparently, “the best way to catch a cheater.” When users want a break from traditional social apps, they may seek out ways to get their “fix” from other places.
Notably Missing: Along with a dropoff in TikTok, we noted that X didn’t make the top 10 for any generation group, even though it may get the most media attention for its founder, policies, and concerns with Grok. Outside of YouTube and streaming-adjacent group chat app Discord, we also noted the absence of streaming apps like Twitch and Kick, which have grown in popularity but have split audiences.
Special thanks to Ivonne Arreola, Rahul Lal, Kiano Gomez, Aidan Maloney, Zoe Kersey, and the rest of the DC Social. Dept. for contributing to this conversation!
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