US teens have left Facebook in droves over the past seven years, preferring to spend time at video-sharing venues YouTube and TikTok, according to a Pew Research Center survey data out Wednesday.
TikTok has "emerged as a top social media platform for
US teens" while Google-run YouTube "stands out as the most common
platform used by teens," the report's authors wrote.
Pew's data comes as Facebook-owner Meta is in a battle with
TikTok for social media primacy, trying to keep the maximum number of users as
part of its multi-billion-dollar ad-driven business.
The report said some 95 percent of the teens surveyed said
they use YouTube, compared with 67 percent saying they are TikTok users.
Just 32 percent of teens surveyed said they log on to
Facebook -- a big drop from the 71 percent who reported being users during a
similar survey some seven years ago.
Once the place to be online, Facebook is now seen as a venue
for older folks with young drawn to social networks where people express
themselves with pictures and video snippets.
About 62 percent of the teens said they use Instagram, owned
by Facebook-parent Meta, while 59 percent said they used Snapchat, researchers
stated.
"A quarter of teens who use Snapchat or TikTok say they
use these apps almost constantly, and a fifth of teen YouTube users say the
same," the report said.
In a bit of good news for Meta's business, its photo and
video sharing service Instagram was more popular with US teens than it was in
the 2014-2015 survey.
Meanwhile, less than a quarter of the teens surveyed said
they ever use Twitter, the report said.
The study also confirmed what casual observers may have
suspected, 95 percent of US teens say they have smartphones, while nearly as
many of them have desktop or laptop computers.
And the share of teens who say they are online almost
constantly has nearly doubled to 46 percent when compared to survey results
from seven years ago, researchers noted.
The report was based on a survey of 1,316 US teens, ranging
in age from 13 years old to 17 years old, conducted from mid-April to early May
of this year, according to Pew.
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