Social Media Stocks Weather Download Slowdown

Social media stocks got a big boost last year as people sheltered in place amid the global pandemic. But with life slowly returning to normal, the group is facing its moment of truth.   At the peak of the pandemic in the U.S., social media app downloads spiked between the months of March and May across most of the major players, including TikTok, Facebook, Snapchat and Twitter.    As a result, the stocks of those companies also shined. Snap and Twitter were the strongest performers, rising a respective 207% and 69% in 2020. Facebook was up 33%, while the S&P 500 gained 16%.   However, after staying resilient through March of this year, social media app downloads have slowed significantly over the past two months. Since having more than 10 million app downloads in the U.S. in May of 2020, the TikTok app saw just 4.4 million downloads in May of 2021.    Facebook went from 5.4 million U.S. app downloads last March to 3.1 million, Snapchat from 3.2 million to 1.7 million and Twitter from 2.2 million to 1.4 million app downloads one year later.    Despite the slowdown in app downloads across the board, some of the social stocks are still surging. Facebook…
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