Want to capture young Americans between the ages of 13 and 17? Being relevant on YouTube, TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat may be essential for your broadcast media properties, a newly released analysis from Pew Research Center concludes.
Pew polled a group of teens between September 18 and October 10, and here’s what it found: most teens use social media and have a smartphone, and nearly half say they’re online almost constantly.
YouTube tops the list of the online platforms asked about in Pew’s survey. Nine-in-ten teens report using the site, slightly down from 95% in 2022.
Overall, 73% of teens say they go on YouTube daily, making YouTube the most widely used and visited platform Pew asked about. This share includes 15% who describe their use as “almost constant.”
TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat remain widely used among teens. Roughly six-in-ten teens say they use TikTok and Instagram, and 55% say the same for Snapchat. About six-in-ten visit TikTok daily. This includes 16% who report being on it almost constantly. Roughly half of teens say they go on Instagram or Snapchat every day, including about one-in-ten who say they’re on each of these platforms almost constantly.
Meanwhile, Facebook and X use have steeply declined over the past decade. Today, 32% of teens say they use Facebook. This is down from 71% in 2014-2015, though the share of teens who use the site has remained stable in recent years. Some 17% of teens say they use X (formerly Twitter) – about half the share who said this a decade ago (33%), and down from 23% in 2022.
Roughly one-quarter of teens (23%) say they use WhatsApp, up 6 percentage points since 2022.
And 14% of teens use Reddit, a share that has remained stable over the past few years.
Pew also asked about Threads, launched by parent company Meta in 2023, for the first time this year. Only 6% of teens report using it.
How does the use of online platforms differ across demographic groups?
