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Online Apps & Social Media Services Being Used More Often

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NORTH TEXAS (CBSDFW.COM) - It seems we're using a variety of online apps and services more and more.

According to Maeve Duggan, a research associate at Pew Research Center, a new survey finds 36-percent of smartphone owners use a messaging app that doesn't count as a text in their monthly phone plan. "This is especially popular among the youngest smartphone users. Forty nine-percent of whom are using messaging apps like WhatsApp or iMessage," she said.

But Duggan said sending the message isn't the only concern, users also want them to go away. "We also asked about mobile apps that automatically delete sent messages, like Wickr or Snapchat, and 17-percent of smartphone owners are using those apps."

It's not clear why some social networks are more popular than others, but Facebook is still at the top of the heap -- even on home computers. As it stands, more than 70-percent of adults who are online use the giant social media site at least once a day.

When it comes to Pinterest and Instagram, the number of adults using the sites, since Pew first started tracking in 2012, has doubled.

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