Teens are devoting slightly less time to the biggest social media apps but remain as glued to their devices as ever, according to a new Pew Research Center report.
While YouTube is still the top online platform among those covered in Pew’s study, “only” 90% of teens reported using it, down from 93% a year ago. But the number who reported daily YouTube viewing grew from 71% to 73%.
A few other big-name networks exhibited comparable or greater percentage slips. Snapchat usage skidded from 60% to 55%, Facebook bumped down from 33% to 32%, and X’s decline accelerated from 20% to 17%. That’s barely above half of the 33% share the then-Twitter reached in Pew’s 2015 study.
TikTok, meanwhile, held steady at 63%, and Reddit did the same at 14%. Only two networks saw gains: Instagram inched up from 59% to 61%, and WhatsApp climbed from 20% to 23%.
Instagram’s popularity, however, doesn’t seem to have done anything for Threads, with only 6% of teens saying they used that short-form social platform spun out of Insta. Pew did not ask about the other X alternative to secure anything like mainstream adoption, Bluesky. This year’s survey also did not cover platforms assessed in earlier versions, such as Discord and Twitch.
But while American teens may give less screen time to these online destinations, they’re not spending any less time online overall. Just like in 2023 and in 2022, 46% of teens reported being online “almost constantly.” Black and Hispanic teens appear to be more intense internet users, with almost-constantly shares of 53% and 58% compared with 37% for white teens. Pew did not provide a gender breakdown for this metric.
Once again, smartphones are the most popular way to while away those hours: 95% of teens reported using one to go online at home; 88% said they used a desktop or laptop, 83% a gaming console, and 70% a tablet.
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Pew did not assess whether these teenagers felt good about all that online time, but a November 2022 Pew study reported that teenagers found social media apps helped them stay in touch with friends, let them express their creativity, and provided emotional support. Another survey released Monday by the Family Online Safety Institute also found that kids thought online time improved their well-being overall.
Pew, a Washington think tank, used the research firm Ipsos to conduct the survey online from Sept. 18 through Oct. 10 among 1,391 US teens aged 13 to 17 contacted via parents already part of Ipsos’s KnowledgePanel.
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About Rob Pegoraro
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