Thought Leadership

Survey: YouTube Top Social Media Site for Teens; Facebook Usage Plummets

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YouTube is the favorite social media platform for American teenagers ages 13–17, with 95 percent saying they use the video-sharing site, Pew Research Center finds. Next in social media popularity among U.S. teens is TikTok, which 67 percent of those surveyed say they use. Sixteen percent say they use TikTok “almost constantly.”

Meanwhile, the share of teens who say they use Facebook has plummeted from 71 percent in Pew’s 2014–15 survey to 32 percent today.

As Pew finds, teen boys are more likely than teen girls to say they use YouTube, Twitch and Reddit. Teen girls are more likely than teen boys to use TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat. Overall, 35 percent of teens say they use at least one of these social media platforms almost constantly. Nineteen percent say they use YouTube almost constantly, while 15 percent say the same about Snapchat.

Still, 55 percent of U.S. teens surveyed say they spend what they consider the right amount of time on these social media apps and sites. More than a third (36 percent) say they spend too much time on social media. Just 8 percent of teens surveyed think they spend too little time on these platforms.

For 54 percent of the U.S. teens surveyed, giving up social media would be at least somewhat hard. Forty-six percent say it would be at least somewhat easy.

Teen girls are more likely than teen boys to say giving up social media would be at least somewhat difficult for them (58 percent versus 49 percent). Conversely, a quarter of teen boys say giving up social media would be very easy for them, compared to 15 percent of teen girls.

Older teens also say it would be difficult for them to give up social media. Fifty-eight percent of those ages 15–17 surveyed say giving up social media would be at least somewhat difficult for them, compared to 48 percent of teens 13–14 years old.


[Photo credit: Tada Images]

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