Social media, especially YouTube, TikTok, Snapchat and Instagram, has become dominant among teenagers, half of whom say they are constantly online, but what is interesting is that the Snapchat application attracted them more compared to Instagram this year, according to a new survey conducted by the Pew Research Center on Teens and Technology. .
Opinion poll
About 1,500 teens participated in the September and October Pew poll, with a margin of error of 3.2 percentage points.
The 46% of teens, ages 13 to 17, who said they were online “almost constantly” was unchanged from last year, but was double that of 2014, when only 24% of teens said they were online all the time.
But the comparison this year between Snapchat and Instagram went in favor of Snapchat, as 60% of teenagers said they use Snapchat, while 59% said they use Instagram, compared to last year when 62% used Instagram and 59% used Snapchat.
In 2014-2015, the percentage of teenagers who used Instagram was 52%, and the percentage of those who used Snapchat was only 41%.
Social media use may vary slightly depending on the type of user, with teenage girls using TikTok and Snapchat more frequently than boys, while their use of YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook is about equal.
By race
BeReal was the most recent social media platform included in the Pew survey, and the only platform likely to attract white teens more than black or Latino teens.
About 80% of black teens used TikTok, compared to 70% of Latino teens and about 60% of white teens, and a larger number of black teens reported that they used the X platform, formerly known as Twitter, compared to white teens. Or people of Latin descent.
Large proportions
The percentage of teens who use TikTok daily is 58%. Of these, 17% described their use of TikTok as “almost constant,” while 32% said they use it several times a day.
Latino teens prefer to use TikTok frequently, with nearly one in three Latino teens reporting they use the app almost constantly, compared to one in five Black teens and one in 10 white teens.
Some platforms decline
Facebook no longer dominates social media for teens. Between 2014-2015, 71% of teens used Facebook compared to 33% who currently use it.
The same can be said for X, formerly known as Twitter, which saw usage drop from 33% to 20% over the same time period.
It was noted that teens in low-income families use Facebook more than their peers, with 45% of teens in families earning less than $30,000 a year reporting that they use Facebook, compared to 27% of teens in families earning at least $75. One thousand dollars annually.
Instagram, which is owned by Meta, the parent company of Facebook, remains widely popular.
But this does not deny that Instagram, along with most major social media platforms, has faced a flood of criticism in recent years over how it protects teenage users, according to Forbes.
