If you were to walk around Cabrini’s campus— through Jazzman’s, Founder’s Hall and maybe even into a classroom— you are more than likely to see a student with their nose in their phone, scrolling through their social media sites. Most college students are constantly glued to their phones, but what is it they’re looking at?
According to a recent survey taken of 50 Cabrini students, Snapchat appears to be the leading social media app for college students. 50 percent of students favor Snapchat the most, followed by Instagram at 26 percent and Twitter at 14 percent. Only eight percent of students favor Facebook and two percent said they like Reddit the most.
According to a study done by PC Magazine, the top social media application that college students use is Snapchat. The following popular apps nationwide include Tinder, Grindr, Instagram, Facebook and school-centric apps, among many more.
“I definitely use Snapchat more than all the other apps,” Cierra Saunders, a sophomore information technology major, said. “I have accounts on all the major social media networks and am constantly on them, just browsing to pass time, but I check Snapchat most frequently.”
There are many different uses for these apps. College students can take advantage of popular social media networks to find out information about current news, meet new friends and keep up to date on trends and events happening both on and off campus.
“I use all my social media apps for different things,” Effie Soldatos, a junior education major at Cabrini, said. “Snapchat is for seeing what my friends are doing in the moment and keeping up with my best friends just by sending pictures. Twitter is where I like to get most of my news from. I use Instagram to see what my friends and family have done over the weekend or any special events. Instagram’s probably the social media platform I like the most; it just never gets boring.”
Social media networks are constantly evolving. With every update, new features are added or changed so the app can be more user-friendly.
College students— millennials in general— are also constantly changing. They change their opinions, looks, majors, interests and lifestyles constantly. These changes can lead to a switch up of what a student is looking for in terms of their social media needs.
“I don’t use Facebook as much as I used to,” Trey Critides, a senior political science major, said. “In middle school and high school, I was constantly posting on Facebook but now I’m more into Instagram and Twitter. I think it’s because my whole family— even my grandmother and everyone from my high school— is on Facebook. I just tend to avoid it as much as possible.”
There are many various social media networks and apps at the fingertips of college students.
For those interested in cooking or style inspiration, Pinterest can be useful for finding new ideas and to share Pinterest boards with others.
Those who are into more artistic pictures without lengthy captions can utilize VSCO, which makes it easy to capture, edit and post your pictures.
For students looking to share their opinions or expertise, Reddit may be the app for them.
Whatever you are looking for, there is a social media app for that.
“I like a lot of less popular social media apps,” Nicolette Morroni, a junior human resource management major, said. “Pinterest is my favorite. I love finding new recipes and life hacks on the app. I also am really into Tumblr and VSCO. I think they’re really cool apps to share pictures and get inspiration from other people’s pictures as well.”
