Snapchat daily active users

From 2015 to 2023, Snapchat's daily active users and the US secondhand and thrift store market both expanded with the kind of enthusiasm usually reserved for things that are actually related to each other, achieving r = 0.9676. One theory is that Snapchat Stories gave a generation the confidence to photograph outfits assembled from other people's cast-offs, creating a virtuous cycle of content and commerce. Another theory is that this is simply what happens when two industries both court the same 22-year-old who is simultaneously broke and extremely online. The ghost in this dataset is wearing vintage Levi's and knows your dog's name.

Both Snapchat's user base and the secondhand market grew substantially by targeting overlapping Gen Z and millennial demographics between 2015 and 2023. The US resale market grew from roughly $17 billion in 2015 to over $43 billion by 2023, driven by sustainability consciousness, platform-enabled resale through ThredUp and Poshmark, and economic pressure on younger consumers. Snapchat's daily active users grew from 107 million to 363 million, driven by the same generational cohort. Social media platforms actively amplified thrift culture through influencers and aesthetic movements like 'thrifted outfits,' creating a plausible but not direct link between the two growth curves.

Two industries that market aggressively to the same demographic cohort will grow together as that cohort ages and gains spending power, creating correlations that are demographically grounded but causally vague. The correlation is a portrait of a generation, not a mechanism.