The social media landscape is ever-changing, especially among teens, who are often on the leading edge of this space.
A new Pew Research Center survey of American teenagers ages 13 to 17 finds TikTok has rocketed in popularity since its North American début several years ago and now is a top social media platform for teens among the platforms covered in this survey.
Some 67 per cent of teens say they use TikTok, with 16 per cent of all teens saying they use it almost constantly. Meanwhile, the share of teens who say they use Facebook, a dominant social media platform among teens in the centre’s 2014-15 survey, has plummeted from 71 per cent to 32 per cent today. These are some of the findings from an online survey of 1,316 teens conducted by the Pew Research Center from April 14 to May 4, 2022.
YouTube tops the 2022 teen online landscape among the platforms covered in the survey since it is used by 95 per cent of teens. TikTok is next on the list of platforms asked about in this survey (67% per cent), followed by Instagram and Snapchat, which are used by about six in 10 teens. After those platforms come Facebook with 32 per cent and smaller shares who use Twitter, Twitch, WhatsApp, Reddit, and Tumblr.
Changes in the social media landscape since 2014-15 extend beyond TikTok’s rise and Facebook’s fall. Growing shares of teens say they have been using Instagram and Snapchat since then. Conversely, Twitter and Tumblr saw declining shares of teens who reported using their platforms. And two of the platforms the centre tracked in the earlier survey – Vine and Google+ – no longer exist.
There are some notable demographic differences in teens’ social media choices. For example, teen boys are more likely than teen girls to say they use YouTube, Twitch and Reddit, whereas teen girls are more likely than teen boys to use TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat. In addition, higher shares of black and Hispanic teens report using TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, and WhatsApp compared with white teens.
This study also explores teens’ frequency on the top five online platforms: YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat and Facebook. Some 35 per cent of teens say they are using at least one of them “almost constantly”. Teen TikTok and Snapchat users mainly engage with these platforms, followed by teen YouTube users in close pursuit. A quarter of teens who use Snapchat or TikTok use these apps almost constantly, and a fifth of teen YouTube users say the same. When looking at teens overall, 19 say they use YouTube almost constantly, 16 per cent say this about TikTok, and 15 per cent about Snapchat.
When reflecting on the amount of time they spend on social media generally, a majority of US teens (55 per cent) say they spend about the right amount of time on these apps and sites, while about a third of teens (36 per cent) say they spend too much time on social media. Just 8 per cent of teens think they spend too little time on these platforms.
Regarding the idea of giving up social media, 54 per cent of teens say it would be somewhat hard to give it up, while 46 per cent say it would be at least relatively easy. Teen girls are more likely than teen boys to express it would be difficult to give up social media (58 per cent vs 49 per cent). Conversely, a quarter of teen boys say giving up social media would be very easy, while 15 per cent of teen girls say the same. Older teens also say they would have difficulty giving up social media. About six in 10 teens ages 15 to 17 (58 per cent) say giving up social media would be at least somewhat difficult to do. A smaller share of 13- to 14-year-olds (48 per cent) thinks this would be difficult.
Beyond just online platforms, the new survey finds that the vast majority of teens have access to digital devices, such as smartphones (95 per cent), desktop or laptop computers (90 per cent) and gaming consoles (80 per cent). And the study shows there has been an uptick in daily teen Internet users, from 92 per cent in 2014-15 to 97 per cent today. In addition, the share of teens who say they are online almost constantly has roughly doubled since 2014-15 (46 per cent now and 24 per cent then).
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