More Swiss youngsters sign up to Instagram

Over 90% of young people in Switzerland use their smartphones on a daily basis Keystone

Instagram continues to grow in popularity among Swiss youngsters, while Facebook, still the top social media platform, has fallen from grace, a new survey reveals.

According to the IGEM-digiMONITOR 2016 report released on Thursday, 66% of young Swiss use Instagram on a daily basis to share photos and videos – up from 43% three years ago.

The percentage of Facebook users aged 15-24 remains high, but fell last year by 10% to 70%, the digital media group reported.

The smartphone has become the ubiquitous device among young people. The survey showed that over 90% of young people in this age group use their smartphones on a daily basis, compared to an average of two-thirds for the Swiss population.

Over 70% watch films on their smartphones and two-thirds of those surveyed said they use them to read news. Meanwhile, 68% prefer to read news on a PC or laptop. Also, 3.8% said they use a smartwatch.

While traditional TV networks are struggling to appeal to young viewers, the online video service Netflix has gained in popularity among young Swiss: it is used by 70% of those questioned.

Across all ages, 10% of Swiss now watch Netflix, while 63% of the population watch traditional TV networks on a daily basis. This figure has fallen to 44% among 15-24 year-olds.

More people watch TV programmes on demand: 54% of 15-24 year-olds and 46% among most Swiss.

A growing number of young Swiss smartphone and tablet users (26%) say they have installed ad blocking software on at least one device to avoid unwanted advertising.

SBC strategy

Adrian Zaugg, head of strategy at the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation – the parent company of swissinfo.ch, said the public broadcaster was following these developments closely and trying to adapt output accordingly.

“It’s a huge challenge to address young audiences, so you have to create new formats,” he explained. “A majority of young people will not return to traditional media.”

As one part of the new SBC strategy, Zaugg said the public broadcaster would soon launch nationwide a new series of short video reports for mobile consumption. The series, NouvoExternal link, is already being produced and available from the national French-language service, RTS.

The digiMONITOR 2016 survey of 1,786 Swiss citizens across the country was carried out by phone by the LINK institute between August and September this year.