Gas, the new positive social media app for teenagers

For some time now, Instagram has been facing some fierce and fast growing competition as it’s trying to capture some of the magic that makes TikTok so popular. The platform is now also pushing more and more video content that is automatically uploaded as Reels. Platforms are increasingly copying each other to see what works and what doesn’t. What does this mean for your social strategy?

500.000. That is the number of times this new popular “anti-social media” app has been downloaded. Next to BeReal and TikTok now, there is a similar app that is gaining popularity rapidly with teens in the United States: Gas. This app is dominating the top of the Apple Store downloads at this moment in time. No, we are not talking about an app to check the price of gasoline. What is this new app Gas exactly?

In short, Gas is an app where teens can send each other compliments by answering a poll. While the app is only available in selected states in the US at the moment, more than half a million users have downloaded the app already. Teens can download the app and select their high school through location data. After connecting with friends, they respond to polls about friends going to the same high school as them. Questions such as “the most beautiful person you have ever met” or “who do you secretly admire.”

Sounds familiar? It could be because the founder of Gas, Nikita Bier, also created TBH, a familiar app bought by Facebook in 2018, but was discontinued in 2018. Just as with TBH, the polls are positive, urging teens to complement each other. Or in other words, to” gas each other up”. The intention of the app is to “create a place that makes us feel better about ourselves,” if we may believe the creators of Gas.

This idea is of course not new, but there seems to be a trend going where new social media platforms emphasise authenticity and smaller social networks. This sounds incredible as a counterpart to apps where it only seems to be about a picture-perfect feed and as many followers as possible. Will this app also blow over to our county?