The Rise of Instagram, Fall of Snapchat: Pew’s Take on Teen Social Media in 2024

According to a new Pew Research Center report, teen usage of social media apps has declined this year. The survey was based on 1391 US teens between the ages of 13 to 17 and it was conducted online through Ipsos’ Knowledge Panel. Even though teenagers constantly used their mobile phones, their time on some big social media apps decreased. For instance, 93% of teens used YouTube in 2023 but now its usage has declined to 90% in 2024. On the other hand, 71% teens daily viewed YouTube in 2023 and now their percentage has increased to 73% in 2024. Snapchat was another app that saw some decline in its usage in 2024. 55% teens used Snapchat in 2024 as compared to 60% in 2023. X saw a 3% decline, going from 20% in 2023 to 17% in 2024.

The apps that teens used steadily in 2024 were TikTok (63%) and Reddit (14%). The app that saw some gains in its usage was Instagram, which went from 59% in 2023 to 61% in 2024. Another app, WhatsApp, also climbed from 20% in 2023 to 23% in 2024. Even though Instagram gained some popularity in 2024, Threads still has a small number of users (6%). Pew Research center didn't talk about any X alternatives like Bluseky in their survey, as well as other platforms like Twitch and Discord.

The survey found that even though many teens are not spending as much time on social media as before, this doesn't mean their screen time has decreased. 46% teens reported always being online in 2022 and 2023, with Hispanic (58%) and Black (53%) being the chronically online internet users. 37% of White teens reported that they are constantly online according to a survey. There was no gender breakdown that Pew provided in the report.

95% of teens use their smartphones for their online activity while 88% reported using their desktop or laptops. Some teens also use their gaming consoles (83%) and tablets (70%) to spend their time online. According to a Pew study in 2022, teens said that they love being online because it helps them stay connected to their friends and provides emotional support. Survey by Family Online Safety also found that staying online helps teens to improve their well being and overall creativity. The latest report by Pew Research Center didn't assess how teenagers feel about staying online.

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by Arooj Ahmed via Digital Information World

Conversion Rates Differ Across Industries: Report Shows Email Leads with 28.6%, Instagram Tops Social Apps at 15.5%

Unbounced analyzed different conversion rates across more than 41,000 landing pages and found that conversion rates across different industries are at average 6.6%. Keep in mind that conversion rates vary across industries, devices and traffic sources. For instance, the conversion rate across financial services companies can be 8.4% while the conversion rate across SaaS companies can be as little as 3.8%.

The Events and Entertainment industry has a median 12.3% conversion rate while Education has 8.4% conversion rate. The report also found that even though mobile attracts more visitors, desktop convert 8% better. Health & Wellness industry also converts 22% better on desktop as compared to mobile.

Email Marketing is not dead and it has the highest conversion rate of 28.6%. The social media app with the highest conversion rate is Instagram with a median conversion rate of 15.5%.

To maximize conversions, businesses should experiment with dynamic landing pages tailored to user intent, device, and industry-specific behavior. Leveraging AI-driven personalization can dynamically adjust content layouts, messaging, or CTAs based on whether the visitor is on mobile or desktop. Industries like SaaS, which see lower conversion rates, could integrate interactive tools or demos directly on landing pages to reduce friction in decision-making. Such tailored strategies can help businesses bridge performance gaps and exceed industry benchmarks.

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by Arooj Ahmed via Digital Information World

OpenAI Finally Releases Real-Time Video Capabilities for ChatGPT

OpenAI is finally rolling video capabilities in real-time for its popular ChatGPT. The news is a sigh of relief for many users as it was first unveiled seven months back.

The company shared exciting news during its Livestream event yesterday This is where the new Advanced Voice Mode is very human-like in terms of conversation and will now attain vision capabilities. Through the app, users get options for ChatGPT subscriptions like Plus, Pro, and Team.

To use it, you just need to direct your devices at certain objects and let ChatGPT do the rest by replying in close to real-time. The new Voice Mode with vision has the capability to comprehend the device’s screen also. It gets active after screen sharing. It similarly can explain different settings menus and provide suggestions for math sums as well.

To get access to the latest Advanced Voice Mode featuring vision, you just need to press on the voice icon near the ChatGPT chat bar. After that, press on the video icon that begins the video. You can opt for screen sharing shortly after that by tapping the three-dot menu and then selecting options for Screen Share.

The launch of this latest Voice Mode will begin Thursday and finish by the end of next week. This means not everyone would get access to it right now. In fact, both Enterprise and Edu users would get the feature in January next year but even then no timeline was provided for ChatGPT users across the EU including Norway, Switzerland, and Liechtenstein.

Another demo featuring the new offering was made on CNN where the company’s President used Advanced Voice Mode in a vision quiz about anatomy. As the host drew body parts on the board, ChatGPT understood what was on display and it did a great job.

The tool was able to identify many parts of the body so well but it was seen struggling in some parts and that’s where hallucinating issues stepped in. From what we can confirm, the new Advanced Voice Mode featuring vision was delayed a couple of times in the past to make sure it was error-free.

Then in April this year, the company shared how Advanced Voice Mode will be rolling out to many within a couple of weeks. After that, the firm shared how it required more time. After arriving during the fall season for some, it did not have the visual feature that many were looking forward to. Now, it seems like the AI giant is putting all attention on voice-only Advanced Voice Mode to different platforms and users across the EU.

Now the tech race is getting hotter as both Google and Meta were reported as working on offering similar features for different chatbot products. We even witnessed Google make its first real-time content-analyzing conversational AI features dubbed Project Astra.

Meanwhile, OpenAI just shared its Santa Mode which includes Santa’s voice as a preset in ChatGPT. Users need to tap on snowflakes in the app near the prompt bar to use it.

Image: DIW-Aigen

Read next: AI Overviews Dominate Search, Taking 48% of Mobile Screen Space
by Dr. Hura Anwar via Digital Information World

AI Overviews Dominate Search, Taking 48% of Mobile Screen Space

Analysis of 120,000 keywords across 22 websites conducted by DemandSphere and Botify found that AI Overviews are present in almost half of the search results. Not only this, AI Overviews also take 48% of the screen on mobile results. AI Overviews can appear 60% of the time in a regular search and may take 76% of mobile screen which makes access to other websites and listings hard. 75% of the AI Overviews are from the top twelve ranked pages so in order to get features on AI Overviews, it is important to increase the page rank on Google.

The study also found a new trend among users where they find what they were searching for without clicking on the links 60% of the time. This is called zero-click search and it seems that many businesses are going to be affected by it. There were also some unique search patterns found by the study. One of those was that 55% of the AI Overviews are triggered when keywords under 1,000 monthly searches are searched on Google. Keywords with more than five words cause AI Overviews to appear 73.6% of the times which queries with commercials intent triggered AI Overviews 19.4% of the times. 58.7% of the times, AI Overviews appeared as a result of informational queries.

No matter how well optimized your websites are, if they are not under Google Index box, the chances of them appearing on AI Overviews are very low. About 50% of pages on Google have crawlability issues, while 20% of pages on Bing have the same problem. If your content is of higher quality that can closely match AI generated summary, it can lead to better visibility in AI search results. Businesses can check their content quality and relevance by using cosine similarity analysis.

The study is quite useful for businesses who want to design their strategies around AI Overviews. They should closely measure SERP to measure their true organic visibility as well as analyse similarity between their page’s content and AI Overviews summary. The top priority of pages should be to get ranked in top 12 on Google search results so they can get featured on AI Overviews. Strong SEO is a big game changer for organic performance and developing a stronger AI search strategy will help your page grow a lot. Don't compromise on the content and quality of the page and deeply study Google’s policies of website ranking and AI Overviews.

Read next: VPNs Struggle as Russia Advances Internet Censorship in Key Regions
by Arooj Ahmed via Digital Information World

VPNs Struggle as Russia Advances Internet Censorship in Key Regions

According to reports from Russian and European news outlets, Russia has restricted web services in some regions of the country for a day because they are trying to develop their own sovereign internet. Institute of the Study of War (ISW) reported that Roskomnadzor, Russian communication authority, blocked the internet access of regions like Chechnya, Dagestan and Ingushetia and residents in those areas couldn't access apps like Telegram, YouTube, Google, WhatsApp and some other apps and websites even with VPN. These regions have muslim majority and are located southwest of Russia and share borders with Azerbaijan and Georgia.

A digital rights NGO in Russia called Roskomsvoboda said that some VPNs were working in internet restricted regions but most of them were not. It was unclear which VPNs worked and which didn't but there are reports that at least 197 VPNs are blocked in Russia currently. As Russia is making efforts for censorship, Apple stepped up to help the country by taking down VPN apps from their Russian Apple App Store. Russia plans to make its own sovereign internet so it can have full control over it. $648 million have been invested for projects related to internet and power restrictions in Russia.

Russia seemed to be testing slowing down websites and internet speeds in the country which made most apps like YouTube almost unusable. ISW also said that Russia is also planning to block services like HostGator, Amazon Web Services and other web hosts in the future. The Russian government is already telling the residents to switch to Russian apps and stop using other foreign services. There are also many companies who have stopped providing services in Russia like GoDaddy that stopped supporting Russian domains after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Notion and Wix also stopped their sites in Russia because of US sanctions.

Another country with internet censorship is China that has its own Great Firewall. China has also censored some words or letters that it deemed unsuitable or unacceptable for the internet and there are a lot of foreign apps that have been restricted in the country. People are moving to VPNs but governments can also restrict them. Countries like Myanmar, Cuba, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Pakistan and Vietnam are also known to be countries with no internet freedom, and VPNs are not the permanent solution to access the internet. It is still unclear how far Russia is going for internet restriction and censorship and there is no news about its latest internet policies.

Image: DIW-Aigen

Read next: Say Goodbye to Copy-Pasting: WhatsApp's MetaAI Now Handles Your Message Sharing Automatically
by Arooj Ahmed via Digital Information World

Say Goodbye to Copy-Pasting: WhatsApp's MetaAI Now Handles Your Message Sharing Automatically

WhatsApp Beta for Android 2.24.26.8 update is here and the new feature that has been introduced in it is forwarding your messages and media to MetaAI. So now, users will be able to forward texts, videos, photos, documents and GIFs to MetaAI on WhatsApp, which will make content sharing easier. Channel owners can have more immediate interaction within their channel because the need to save media to their devices will be eliminated and they won't have to manually upload it themselves.

Right now, users aren't able to forward their messages to MetaAI but from this update that will be available in the upcoming days, it will become possible to forward all types of messages to MetaAI. WhatsApp will also allow users to add context to the messages they are forwarding MetaAI and this way users can ask AI questions about the message they just shared with it. If the user doesn’t give any context or input, MetaAI will just analyze the content and share it with the user.

The new feature is going to be useful for many users as it will save their time because there will be no need to copy paste texts manually any longer as well as no download of media will be required. Overall, it is a convenient feature for users who use MetaAI regularly.

At the moment, this feature is under development so it's not even available to beta users yet. But soon, it will be available for all users and then they can make use of this feature to interact with MetaAI. Once the feature is available, users can update their WhatsApp from Google Play Store to share messages with MetaAI directly.

WhatsApp's MetaAI forwarding feature saves time by eliminating manual uploads, allowing easy sharing with added context. However, critics argue that forwarding personal content to MetaAI raises privacy and security risks, potentially exposing sensitive data. They also highlight the potential for inaccurate AI message analysis, questioning the growing dependence on AI for daily interactions.

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by Arooj Ahmed via Digital Information World

Google Launches Gemini 2.0 Flash With Real Time Conversion and Image Analysis

Google just launched its updated version of the Gemini 2.0 family of AI models.

Called Gemini 2.0 Flash, this is up for grabs in an exciting chat version that users around the world can experiment with. Meanwhile, developers were also treated with another trial of its multimodal version. This features both text-to-speech conversion and features for image generation.

As per CEO Sundar Pichai, Gemini 1.0 was more related to keeping data organized and comprehending information. This latest model on the other hand features more useful offerings. It’s also seen outperforming previous models in terms of user request and code generation. It can also provide more factually correct replies. However, one weak point where it’s subpar in performance to Gemini 1.5 Pro is comprehending longer contexts.

To attain access to chat-optimized variants of experimental Gemini Flash 2.0, users get the chance to choose it by seeing the model’s drop-down menu available on the mobile web as well as the desktop. It’s going to be up for grabs on the Gemini mobile app soon, the firm adds.

The latest multimodal variant of Gemini Flash 2.0 is going to be found on Google’s AI Studio as well as Vertex AI developer apps. Overall availability of Gemini 2.0 Flash’s multimodal variant will appear in January. This is where users will find different Gemini 2.0 model sizes. More plans for expansion to other Google domains are on the horizon by early next year.

This is clearly Google’s main effort in the tech world’s highly competitive AI race. There are plenty of archrivals including Microsoft, OpenAI, and Meta who have similarly robust offerings.

Alongside this release, Google did tease about other models that are solely designed to assist with the likes of research and hence are more agentic AI systems. They comprehend more of the real world, plan several steps ahead, and even take action on the user’s behalf. Of course, supervision is necessary.

• Related: Microsoft's AI Leader Challenges OpenAI's Quick AGI Predictions

Last week we saw Google’s CEO speak about challenging Microsoft’s latest AI advancements. This includes a side-by-side competition to determine who has the best model. This just goes to show how confident he is about winning over the software giant.

However, not all things are as smooth as they appears from the above, as Google's Gemini for Google Workspace, integrated into tools like Gmail and Docs, faces challenges in competing with rivals such as Microsoft Copilot and ChatGPT. Despite offering features like email rewriting and document summarization, internal data shows Gemini lags in brand recognition and usage, particularly in the US and UK. However, the model performs better in markets like Brazil and India. Google has seen improvements since transitioning from "Duet AI" to "Gemini" and remains optimistic about growth in 2025, despite leadership changes within the Workspace team.

Image: DIW-Aigen

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by Dr. Hura Anwar via Digital Information World