Lenny RachitskyHost of Lenny's Podcast | Author of Lenny's Newsletter

Why every social app should be obsessed with teenagers

6 Aug 2026 · 1 min

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Lenny Rachitsky cites a Spanish study showing texting peaks around age 21, with rapid growth from 14 to 18. He argues social apps should target teenagers on that upward curve because network effects compound fastest when users are most active.

There's actually an interesting study some academics in Spain did. They looked at how many people you text per year of your life, and it goes up like very quickly from 14 to 18. It peaks around 21, and then it just falls, it collapses. But if you're building a product with network effects, that's a communication tool, you want to be on that ups upward curve of adding connections to your social graph because then the urgency to connect is higher.