Nearly half of teens in the U.S. are online almost constantly, and the platform they’re using the most is YouTube, a new study from the Pew Research Center has found.
The center reports that 46% of teens say they’re online “almost constantly,” and 90% of teens it surveyed said they use the Google-owned video platform, while 73% of them said they use the platform daily.
TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat round out the list of the top platforms for teens, as 60% of teens reported that they use TikTok and Instagram, while 55% said the same for Snapchat.
While it’s no secret that teens aren’t using Facebook as much as they used to, the study shows just how much has changed over the past decade. It found that teens’ use of Facebook has steeply declined over the past decade, from 71% to only 32% today.
Facebook isn’t the only major platform to see a decline in users, as teens’ use of X (formerly Twitter) has also dropped. The study found that 17% of teens today say they use X, which is almost half of the 33% reported a decade ago, and down from the 23% reported in 2022.
Amid national concerns about technology’s impact on youth, many teens are as digitally connected as ever. Most teens use social media and have a smartphone, and nearly half say they’re online almost constantly, according to a new Pew Research Center survey of U.S. teens ages 13 to 17 conducted Sept. 18-Oct. 10, 2024.
YouTube tops the list of the online platforms we asked about in our survey. Nine-in-ten teens report using the site, slightly down from 95% in 2022.
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.
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 2014-15, though the share of teens who use the site has remained stable in recent years. And 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.
We asked about Threads, launched by parent company Meta in 2023, for the first time this year. Only 6% of teens report using it.
