A new report by the US-based Pew Research Center shows about half (51%) of US teens, ages 13 to 17, say they use Facebook lower than those who use YouTube, Instagram or Snapchat.
Pew said the social media landscape in which teens reside today “looks markedly different” than it did as recently as 3 years ago. Even technology-wise, there are more smartphones in people’s hands. In the Center’s 2014-2015 survey of teen social media use, 71% of teens had reported being Facebook users. No other platform was used by a clear majority of teens at that time: Around half (52%) of teens said they used Instagram, while 41% reported using Snapchat.
In 2018, however, 3 Online platforms other than Facebook – YouTube, Instagram & Snapchat – are used by sizable majorities of this age group. Meanwhile, 51% of teens now say they use Facebook. The shares of teens who use Twitter & Tumblr are largely comparable to the shares who did so in the 2014-2015 survey, the report said.
For the most part, teens tend to use similar platforms regardless of their demographic characteristics, but there are exceptions. Notably, lower-income teens are more likely to gravitate toward Facebook than those from higher-income households – a trend consistent with previous Center surveys. Seven-in-ten teens living in households earning less than US $30,000 a year say they use Facebook, compared with 36% whose annual family income is $75,000 or more.
Pew pointed out that one thing to note was there were some changes in the wording of questions between Pew Research Center’s 2014-2015 & 2018 surveys of teen social media use. YouTube & Reddit were not included as options in the 2014-2015 survey but were included in the current survey. In addition, the 2014-2015 survey required respondents to provide an explicit response for whether or not they used each platform, while the 2018 survey presented respondents with a list of Sites & allowed them to select the ones they use. Even so, it is clear the social media environment today revolved less around a single platform than it did 3 years ago.2
When it came to which one of these Online platforms teens used the most, roughly one-third said they visited Snapchat (35%) or YouTube (32%) most often, while 15% said the same of Instagram. By comparison, 10% of teens said Facebook was their most-used Online platform, & even fewer cited Twitter, Reddit or Tumblr as the Site they visited most often.
Image Credit: Pew Research
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