The bad news for Facebook came from a survey by Pew Research Center. It questioned 1,316 U.S. teens between the ages of 13 and 17 about their online habits and found that just 32% of them use the Facebook app. The results are a stark contrast to Pew Research Center’s survey in 2015, which found a massive 71% of teens used Facebook at that time. But the social network has seen this demographic decline yearly since then. Despite CEO Mark Zuckerberg calling for the platform to refocus its efforts toward serving younger users last year, more teens have abandoned it in droves.
While not really a social media site, the most popular platform among participants was YouTube, which 95% of surveyed teens said they use—19% confessed to being on the video-streaming platform “almost constantly.” Tik-Tok was the unsurprising runner-up, with 67% saying they use it and 16% admitted they’re on the app almost constantly. But it wasn’t all bad news for Meta; Instagram, which it owns alongside Facebook, took third place with 62% of teens using it, 10% of whom say they’re scrolling through pictures and videos almost all the time. Snapchat was another service to see its use among teens increase since 2015, going from 41% to 59%. Twitter and Tumblr both fell, by 10% and 9%, respectively. Twitch (20%), WhatsApp (17%), and Reddit (14%) weren’t included in the survey seven years ago.
There are also some platforms from 2015 that have ceased to exist: 33% of teens back then used Google+, and 24% used Vine. Another part of the recent survey asked about what devices teens owned or had access to. Smartphones were number one with 95%, up from 73% in 2015. This was followed by desktops/laptops at 90%, up from 87%, and games consoles with 80%, down from 81%. Over half the teens (54%) said they would find it hard to give up social media, and 36% said they spent too much time on it. As for the number who use the internet daily, that rose from 92% in 2015 to 97%.
