The new survey prepared by GlobalWebIndex reveals that the growth of instant messaging apps is radically changing the way we communicate. After the massive success of social networks, now it seems that users prefer apps like WhatsApp and WeChat. The research conducted by GlobalWebIndex provides us with precise data for this change. Even if we are not very surprised by these results, an interesting overview comes to light.

Through this survey we can see that now all communications and actions that once users carried out on social networks are now performed using apps like WhatsApp. Just to give you an idea: in Italy WhatsApp is now used more than Facebook. The growth of these apps that allow you to have instant conversations has resulted in a further decline of traditional messaging services as SMS and MMS. These services, according to GlobalWebIndex, decreased respectively by 11% and 17%. We can state that this is an obvious decline, even though millions of users around the world still send their messages via SMS or MMS.

The countries monitored by the research were 33. In 8 of them WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger are the most used instant messaging app, while they are still far behind in Asian countries. In fact in these countries one of the most used app is LINE, that in three countries wins the competition against the apps owned by Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook and WhatsApp Messenger). LINE in fact is the most used instant application in Japan, Thailand and Taiwan. In South Korea, the market is dominated by Kakao Talk. In China the most used app is WeChat, used by 3 of 5 adults, while in Vietnam is Zalo.

Other interesting data of the research published by GlobalWebIndex concern the age of the users of instant messaging apps. It seems that most of them are  between 16 and 34 years old, and among teenagers Snapchat is hugely used. The use of instant messaging services decreases proportionally when the age of the users increases. Snapchat users are younger (84% are under 35 years) and among American teenagers is more widespread than Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp. It also seems that people between 16 and 24 are those who spend more time on the internet through their mobile devices.

Furthermore, the research shows that WhatsApp is the app with the most active users, but Facebook Messenger is the one most addictive. As for Instagram, its users (86%) are those most likely to use instant messaging app, followed by Google+ and Twitter (82%). The research data were collected through online questionnaires between March and April 2015, to which 47,622 people aged between 16 and 64 replied.