"Are You Old-Fashioned If You Only Use KakaoTalk?... Apps 20-Somethings Use to Stay on Trend"

Survey by the Korean Women's Development Institute
University students use Instagram and YouTube more than KakaoTalk

It has been found that university students use Instagram more than KakaoTalk, the so-called "national messenger" app.

AI-extracted images of people holding smartphones

Instagram is the No. 1 app among university students

On February 14, the Korean Women's Development Institute released the results of a survey of 1,500 university students nationwide (750 men and 750 women), which showed that Instagram ranked first (81.1%) as the most frequently used social networking service (SNS) in daily life. It was followed by YouTube (71.2%) and KakaoTalk (70.3%). X (formerly Twitter) ranked fourth at 25.9%, but the gap with the top three was large.

The short-form content platform TikTok recorded a response rate of 8.5%. This contrasts with TikTok's high popularity among Generation Z (born between 1997 and 2012) and Generation Alpha (born in 2013 or later) in the United States and Europe.

Facebook, which gained popularity among younger people in the 2010s, also remained at 5.3%. Threads, an Instagram-based SNS launched in 2023 by Meta, Facebook's parent company, recorded 2.1%.

By contrast, Everytime, an online university community whose users are limited to enrolled students and graduates, recorded a response rate of 9.1%.

The Korean Women's Development Institute analyzed, "Because these figures represent the response rates for the first to third most-used platforms among all platforms, the actual usage rate of Everytime is estimated to be higher than this," adding, "This suggests that Everytime is being actively used as a major space for information sharing, opinion formation, and social communication within universities."

Preferences for SNS differed by gender. For X, the response rate among female students was 45.2%, whereas it was only 6.5% among male students. In other words, the usage rate among female students was more than seven times higher than that of male students.

Conversely, for the voice chat app Discord, mainly used while gaming, and the online community DC Inside, the response rates among male students were 8.0% and 5.7%, respectively. Among female students, they were only 2.4% and 1.1%.

Instagram logo. The Asia Business Daily DB

University students use SNS "for communication and conversation"

When asked to choose two reasons for using SNS, university students most frequently cited "communication and conversation" (69.9%). This was followed by "consuming content such as memes, social issues, and videos" (38.1%), "checking the daily lives of friends, acquaintances, or celebrities" (27.7%), "sharing photos and videos" (25.1%), and "self-expression and sharing interests" (15.9%).

The Korean Women's Development Institute stated, "In particular, the fact that 'consuming content such as memes, social issues, and videos' accounted for a high proportion shows that university students are using SNS not merely as a private network, but as a major channel for accessing public opinion and trends."