A Pew Research Center survey revealed that YouTube is the most used platform by teens in the nation for the second year in a row. The website is followed by TikTok and Instagram.
93% of 13-17 year-olds said they use YouTube frequently. 63% claimed to use TikTok, 60% use Snapchat and 59% admitted to using Instagram.
PI 2023.12.11 Teens Social ... by Veronica Silveri
On the other hand, Facebook and X (formerly Twitter) are declining in popularity among teenagers. Although Mark Zuckerberg's social network is still the one that has the most users worldwide, its use has been drastically reduced. Only 33% of young people claimed to use it (compared to 71% in 2014 and 2015). X is the big loser as only 20% of respondents claim to frequently use X:
Facebook once dominated the social media landscape among America's youth, but the share of teens who use the site has dropped from 71% in 2014-2015 to 33% today. Twitter, which was renamed X in July 2023, has also seen its teen user base shrink during the past decade - albeit at a less steep decline than Facebook.
Daily network usage and the concerning use of TikTok
Seven out of ten teenagers use YouTube daily. (16% of these said they visit the platform "almost constantly"). In the case of TikTok, 58% said they access the website every day (17% of these use it "constantly"). Around 50% of young people said they use Instagram and Snapchat daily (Only 19% said the same for Facebook).
The report also discovered that "teenage girls are more likely than boys to say they almost constantly use TikTok (22% vs. 12%) and Snapchat (17% vs. 12%)." In the case of YouTube, Instagram and Facebook "there are little to no differences in the shares of boys and girls who report almost constantly using YouTube, Instagram and Facebook."
A poll on major hot topics revealed earlier this year that 49% of Americans would welcome a ban on TikTok because of its ties to the Chinese Communist Party compared to 42% who do not support a national ban.
