Bidvine conducted a survey recently that revealed that the average profile picture was 2 years old. This result came through asking 2,000 British social media users just how old their pictures were. Across different social media websites and applications, the numbers varied drastically. Some app users changed their image every couple of weeks, but on some social media websites, users wouldn’t change their profile picture for years at a time.
So what exactly are the numbers?
- According to Bidvine’s survey, these were the statistics they found:
Users who used the dating application Grindr changed their image every two weeks. Users who used the dating app Tinder changed their’s every three weeks. - People who used WhatsApp changed their profile picture every 2.5 months
- Users of Facebook averaged changing their image every 5 months, whereas users of its sister company Instagram changed their’s an average of every 6 months. Also, 1 in 4 people polled wouldn’t want their boss to see their current Facebook profile picture.
- People who use SnapChat changed their profile pictures every 8 months.
- Twitter uses changed their profile picture every 1.8 years.
- People who used LinkedIn averaged changing their image every 2.1 years.
- Users of the dating website Plenty of Fish changed their image every 3.2 years, whereas users of Match.com changed their image every 4 years.
- 11% of people polled said they hadn’t changed their profile pictures in 10 years.
Why is this?
Though everyone’s reason for not changing their profile pictures more regularly may be different and personal to them, there were still similarities in the answers. Those who were polled were also asked: “If you don’t change a profile photo regularly, why do you think this is?” What were their answers?
More then half of those polled (62%) said that they didn’t change their pictures because they had a hard time finding new images of themselves they were fond of. 49% of those polled said that they wanted to look younger online, so they kept their images around.
When it came to talking about the results, the CEO of Bidvine, Sohrab Jahanbani, made the following statement:
“Looking at the regularity with which people change their profile photos, it appears that older, more conventional dating websites and the networks people use on a regular professional basis, such as LinkedIn and Twitter lag behind, while younger single people are more likely to want to use newer photos.
“It appears that people don’t change their photos because they struggle to find photos of themselves they like. So with this in mind, Bidvine is setting up pop up photo booths offering free professional photography for those who want to update their social media profile pictures. As we all know, whether it’s for a wedding, a company headshot or your online profiles, professional photos make a difference. We’ll be announcing cities and dates for the photo booths on our website shortly.”