Post Worthy:
A Look at Trends in Text-Based Sharing

A year ago, we launched Threads with the belief that everyone has something valuable to say. We want to create a place where people feel comfortable sharing their thoughts and ideas.

To dig deeper into how people are using Threads – and social media in general – we’ve partnered with Wakefield Research to survey nearly 2,000 Gen Z, Millennial, Gen X, and Boomer respondents in the US about their social media preferences.

The survey signals that Threads can be a place for positivity, with many respondents with a Threads profile agreeing that the app is a breath of fresh air compared to the negativity on the rest of the internet.¹ Let’s dive into the rest of the findings.

Community for you and me

For the majority of respondents (60 percent), connecting with others is the most important part of social media,² and many people on Threads believe the app helps build strong communities and fosters friendly conversations.

Topic Tags, one of the first community features to launch, gives people the ability to tag a topic on a Threads post, and better enables discovery and engagement with posts they care about. Since introducing the feature, more than 50 million Tags have been created to help bring communities together.³ Five of the top, most popular Tags in the last three months are:⁴

• PhotographyThreads
• BookThreads
• GymThreads
• ArtThreads
• TTPD

Social is for entertainment news

Gen Z also has a clear goal for logging into their socials. 67 percent report they check their feed for entertainment-related news. Gen Zs also report they would check their feed for music-related news (60 percent), food-related news (59 percent), and fashion-related news (42 percent).⁵ With features like Topic Tags and Trending Topics in the U.S., which surfaces relevant topics within search and on the “for you” feed, Threads has quickly become a place to discover this type of news.

It’s a love story: Taylor Swift x Threads

There’s a growing and engaged community of Swifites on Threads. TTPD, a Tag that helps identify conversations about Taylor Swift’s latest album, The Tortured Poets Department, is one of the top five Tags of the last three months.⁶ “Swifties” and “Taylor Swift” are also popular, ranking in the top 20 Tags of the last three months.⁷ Considering that Gen Z is checking their feeds for moments like a new album drop (43 percent) or a music tour announcement (31 percent),⁸ Threads is the perfect place to find Swiftie fandom content.

Text is king

People are coming to Threads to share their thoughts and ideas about their interests using text: More than half (63 percent) of all Threads posts are text-only.⁹ Several text-only Trends have taken off, like using the app as a personal journal and other prompts that the Threads community has participated in, like The Cities Trend, The Five Jobs Trend, and more.

But with all of this typing, the question of good grammar comes up: Is it necessary on social media? 73 percent of Americans surveyed feel it’s always necessary to post in proper sentence case, but more than 1 in 3 Gen Z (36 percent) throw punctuation out the window and post in all lowercase. In fact, a quarter of Gen Z (25 percent) think punctuation is rarely or never necessary.¹⁰

Picture this

Threads is primarily used for text-based creation, but many people are supplementing their posts with images. Photos are one of the most used features on the app, with one in four Threads posts including at least one.¹¹ With the introduction of an in-app camera, and the growing Photography Threads community, photos have become a popular way to enhance text-first posts.

While 67 percent of Americans surveyed are more likely to use their phone’s camera to take a photo for social media, the use of a social media apps’ native camera is on the rise: Both Gen Z (47 percent) and Millennials (42 percent) gravitate towards using social media apps to take pictures they plan to share.

OMG, I actually LOLed

You can never be sure if someone actually laughed out loud at your post, but 77 percent of Americans surveyed have a tell when they do.¹² Most commonly, 38 percent of people use an emoji reaction when they audibly laugh out loud to a message or social media post, including 44 percent of Gen Zers.¹³

While more than 42 percent of Americans think the rolling on the floor laughing emoji (🤣) does the best job expressing that something is extremely funny, 1 in 5 Gen Zers think the loudly crying emoji (😭) is the better reaction.¹⁴ With both of these emojis being part of the top five most used on Threads,¹⁵ there’s a chance that you might find your new favorite internet comedian on the app. Other popular emojis include the black heart (🖤), the sparkle (✨), and the heart eyes (😍).

Too long to type, I’ll send you a voice note

Whether you ‘heart’ voice notes or have never heard of them may depend on your generation. Both Gen Z (65 percent) and Millennials (63 percent) surveyed love voice notes, while nearly half of Gen X and a whopping 70 percent of Boomers don’t know what they are.¹⁶

Live in the South? You just might like voice notes slightly more: Nearly 70 percent of Gen Zers who live in this region say they love voice notes, more so than those in the Northeast (59 percent).¹⁷

Threads introduced voice notes shortly after the initial launch, and they’ve become a popular feature for celebrities, like Cardi B and Serena Williams, who’ve used them to answer questions from fans during AMAs they’ve hosted on the app.

I’m a content creator, too!

Nearly half of Gen Z social media users who were surveyed (48 percent) and more than half (58 percent) of Millennial social media users who were surveyed consider themselves content creators or influencers in some way.¹⁸ For those who partake in content creation, 15 percent of both generations consider it a side hustle, but for 10 percent, it’s a component of their actual career.¹⁹

Threads has given creators a fresh space to start growing their platforms as influencers. In fact, there are emerging creators who never considered themselves – or dreamed of becoming – influencers until they established their voice on Threads.

Threading the needle

Every social media app has its own rhythm, language, and cultural norms. The way that people post and engage with others, join communities, and even use emojis are all determined by the environment the app fosters.

We’re proud of the work we’ve done to help make Threads the best place for public, text-based sharing. As we look forward to the next year of Threads, we’re excited to make the app even better for following and discussing your interests in real time, and are investing in more features that make people feel most comfortable sharing their thoughts and ideas on the app – because everyone has something interesting and valuable to say.