This value has been rising continuously since 2020 from 41% back then and was still at 50% in the previous year. Now this trend has reached the majority of 16 to 18 year olds.
According to the study, girls in particular are influenced when shopping by product suggestions on blogs, Instagram and the like. 62% of them followed the recommendations of influencers in the past six months, but only 47% of the boys surveyed did. In addition, older respondents are more likely to be influenced than younger ones: 59% of 18-year-olds and 49% of 16-year-olds buy products that they have seen on their social media icons.
Spending by 16 to 18 year olds on online consumption has increased significantly compared to the previous year, namely by 43% to now 167 euros per month. Last year, young Germans spent an average of 117 euros a month on online purchases. Boys invest significantly more with an average of 217 euros than girls with 116 euros.
The male young people not only spend more money, they also use direct clicks on YouTube, Instagram and the like more often than the female respondents: around every second boy, but only around every third girl, engages in “social shopping” and buys products directly a social network. Overall, 44% of all young people surveyed have already done this at least once, and another 30% can imagine doing it in the future. This trend is also an important driver of sales in online retail. Almost three quarters of those with social shopping experience would like to do it as often as before or even more often in the future. Incentives include discount campaigns, particularly well-fitting or novel products and the convenience because young people are on social media anyway.
“Opinion leaders on social media are increasingly gaining the trust of young people,” says Thomas Brosch, Head of Digital Sales at Postbank. “They compete with friends, parents, traditional media and teachers for young people’s attention – with great success. The 16 to 18 year olds not only use the Internet to find out about fashion and electronics, but also about banking products. That’s why we are increasingly using social media to explain how our services can be optimally used on smartphones or in the banking portal.”
Following the trend, Whatsapp has also expanded the chat function to include a shopping button, thus enabling social shopping. The instant messaging service, together with the video service YouTube, will remain at the top of the list of the most used channels in 2024 – 73% of those surveyed said they use them to obtain information or exchange information. In 2020, however, both apps still achieved 86% – a drop of 13 percentage points in four years.
Instagram (69%), Tiktok (66%), Snapchat (57%) and Pinterest (29%) all saw slight increases compared to the previous year. The big winners in particular are also used particularly frequently for social shopping. By far the number one choice here is Instagram, which at 56% is used by the majority of 16 to 18 year olds who prefer social shopping to make direct purchases. Tiktok also seems to have integrated the function well, as 41% of those who can at least imagine social shopping have already used the platform for this. For WhatsApp, however, it is only 22%.
Since 2019, Postbank’s “Youth Digital Study” has been examining how the lives of young people in Germany are changing with regard to digitalization in general and particularly with regard to financial topics. In September of this year, 1,000 young people in Germany between the ages of 16 and 18 were surveyed. In order to represent a population-representative structure, the sample was weighted according to federal state, age and gender. The 2023 microcensus from the Federal Statistical Office was used as a reference file. The results are rounded to whole numbers.
