TOPLINE
Teens are using social media at rates as high as ever, with the majority using YouTube, TikTok, Snapchat and Instagram and nearly half of teens saying they are online “almost constantly,” though Snapchat slightly overtook Instagram this year, according to a new Pew Research Center survey of teens and technology.
KEY FACTS
The 46% of teens—13- to 17-year-olds—who said they’re online “almost constantly” is the same as last year, though the number has almost doubled since 2014, when just 24% of teens said they were online “almost constantly.”
There wasn’t much overall change in social media usage between this year and last, as Youtube beat out TikTok as the dominant social media platforms, used by 93% and 63% of teens, respectively.
Snapchat moved above Instagram in 2023, with 60% of teens saying they use Snapchat and 59% using Instagram, compared to 62% using Instagram and 59% using Snapchat last year, and 52% on Instagram and just 41% on Snapchat in 2014-2015.
Social media usage differs slightly by gender, with teen girls being more likely to constantly use TikTok and Snapchat than boys, though constant usage of YouTube, Instagram and Facebook are fairly similar across gender lines, Pew reported.
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Pew polled just under 1,500 teenagers for the survey in September and October, with a margin of error of 3.2 percentage points.
SURPRISING FACT
BeReal, the newest social media platform included on Pew’s poll, is the only platform that white teens were more likely to use than Black or Hispanic teens. TikTok was used by 80% of Black teens, as opposed to 70% of Hispanic teens and almost 60% of white teens, and more Black teens reported using X, formerly known as Twitter, than white or Hispanic teens.
BIG NUMBER
58%. That’s how many teens use TikTok daily. Of those, 17% described their TikTok usage as “almost constant,” and 32% said they use it several times a day. Hispanic teens are most likely to be using TikTok constantly, with almost one in three Hispanic teens reporting they’re almost constantly on the app compared to one in five Black teens and one in 10 white teens.
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TANGENT
Facebook is no longer dominating social media for teens. In 2014-2015, 71% of teens used Facebook compared to the 33% who reported using it now. The same can be said for X, formerly known as Twitter, which has seen usage drop from 33% to 20% over the same time period. However, teens in lower-income households are using Facebook more than their peers: 45% of teens in households making less than $30,000 annually reported using Facebook, compared with 27% of those in households that make at least $75,000 annually. And Instagram—which is owned by Facebook parent Meta—still remains broadly popular. Instagram, along with most major social media platforms, has faced a deluge of criticism in recent years about how it protects teenage users.
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