Bidvine, an online local services marketplace, carried out a study on active social media users and came to know that average social media profile pictures are around 2 years old. The astonishing fact is that social media users check their social media accounts before anything else when they wake up and also keep updating their statuses on a daily basis, but they do not change their profile pictures for up to 4 years, which is odd for active users.
Bidvine wanted to find out how people introduce themselves to others online. So, they asked 2,000 British social media and online dating site users, how often they update their profile pictures?
Results revealed that people who use Grindr and Tinder – online dating applications – don’t keep the same profile picture for more than 2 to 3 weeks. On the other hand, users of Facebook and Instagram keep the same profile picture for 5 to 6 months.
The statistics of dating websites were even more surprising. Users of Plenty of Fish and Match.com do not bother changing their profile picture for 3.2 years and 4 years respectively. So, long for a dating website, isn’t it?
The study was conducted on users of different social media platforms and online dating apps and websites. The complete statistics of the study are:
- Grindr – 2 weeks
- Tinder – 3 weeks
- WhatsApp – 2.5 months
- Facebook – 5 months
- Instagram – 6 months
- SnapChat – 8 months
- Twitter – 1.8 years
- LinkedIn – 2.1 years
- Plenty of Fish – 3.2 years
- com – 4 years
Astonishingly, 11% of the participants said the pictures they used for their social media profile were more than 10 years old.
On asking participants why they do not change their profile picture regularly, 62% admitted they do not find better pictures of them, while 49% participants stated they do not want to put up the pictures of their older selves on their profiles. 1 among every 4 people said they do not want their boss checking their profile picture.
Sohrab Jahanbani, CEO of Bidvine.com commented on the results of the survey saying,
“The surprising results leave an impression that young and single people are more interested in changing their profile pictures frequently whereas people who use more professional and conservative dating websites or social networks like Twitter and LinkedIn, do not care to change their profile pictures on a regular basis.”
He further added,
“It seems that when people don’t find a picture of themselves they’re happy with, they just give up and hence their profile pictures remain unchanged for long periods. To help people get a good profile picture, Bidvine is set to launch pop up photo booths that will offer professional photography for free to those who find it hard to get a good picture of them. Be it a wedding, a company headshot or a profile picture, professional photographs stand out. We’ll let people know when and where we’re going to set up our pop up photo booths.”
