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A social platform with a mysterious ranking algorithm pushing videos to viewers continues to dominate teenage Americans’ screens by an overwhelming margin. No, not TikTok, but YouTube.
A new study by the Pew Research Center finds that 93% of 13- to 17-year-old respondents use YouTube, and 71% use it daily. After that Google-owned bottomless well of content, TikTok ranks second with a 63% usage share; 58% of teens report that short-form video app is a daily habit.
Overall usage stats for YouTube and TikTok declined slightly from Pew’s 2022 survey, which found them used by 95% and 67% of teens, respectively.
Snapchat and Instagram are in a traffic jam for third place, with the ephemeral messaging app used by 60% of respondents and opened every day by 58%. Meta-owned Instagram, which has a history of using Snapchat for feature inspiration, has 59% usage and 47% daily use.
Meta’s flagship social network ranked far lower, with just 33% of teens in the survey saying they use Facebook. That marks a precipitous decline from the 71% share Pew reported in 2015, but also a tiny uptick from the 32% share in Pew’s 2022 survey.
The platform formerly known as Twitter, meanwhile, saw its own decline accelerate. In 2015, 33% of teens used it, while last year 23% did. Now, just 20% say they use X, leaving it behind the chat platform Discord (28%) and the Meta-owned WhatsApp (20%). Perhaps Elon Musk welcoming back conspiracy-lie cranks is no more popular among kids than among their parents.
Three other social platforms show up in Pew’s stats: video-game streaming service Twitch, with 17% usage; Reddit at 14%; and the no-editing-allowed photo app BeReal at 13%.
As for overall usage, a full 46% of Pew respondents say they are online “almost constantly,” with another 47% reporting they go online “several times a day.” The smartphone is the most common device, with 95% of teens saying they have access to one. After that, 90% say they use a desktop or laptop, 83% a gaming console, and 65% a tablet.
(As the father of a 13-year-old, I find those numbers eminently plausible; as a technology journalist, I have no room to talk.)
Pew’s study was conducted from Sept. 26 to Oct. 23 among 1,453 US teens whom this Washington-based think tank recruited via their parents on Pew’s KnowledgePanel. It also surfaced some interesting race, gender and age differences.
- TikTok and Snapchat have a bit of a gender gap among teens who say they use them “almost constantly,” with 22% and 17% usage among girls versus 12% usage for each app among boys.
- Black and Hispanic teens are more likely to report themselves on major apps “almost constantly”; for example, 33% of Hispanic teenagers and 20% of Black teens say they use TikTok that often, compared to 10% of white teens, while YouTube has 27% of Hispanic teens and 23% of Black teens reporting near-constant use, versus 9% of whites saying the same.
- Lower-income households have higher social-media usage rates, with teen Facebook usage at 45% among those earning less than $30,000 a year and 27% in households earning $75,000 or more.
The Pew study doesn't address how teenagers feel about these apps, but Pew released a separate report in November 2022 that found most kids felt that social media let them stay more connected to friends, gave them a creative outlet and lent them emotional support.