Facebook was once the dominant social network used by teens in the US, now it has been surpassed by other social networks, according to a new study by the Pew Research Center. Recently, a 2014-2015 survey showed that Facebook was on top of its competitors.
The study also showed that teens are now spending more time online.
Facebook Dropping Among Teens
The results of a survey by the Pew Research Center show that Facebook may have lost its edge with teens. Only about around half, 51 percent, of US teens ages 13 to 17 use Facebook. This figure is dwarfed by the usage number of other social networks. YouTube, Instagram, and Snapchat are all used more by teens these days.
In the survey, 85 percent of teens say they use YouTube, 72 percent say they use Instagram, and 69 percent say they use Snapchat. In just three years since Pew's last survey on teens' social media use, Facebook's dominance has declined. In the previous survey, 71 percent of teens said that they use Facebook. Results from the time show that 52 percent of teens said they used Instagram and 41 percent said they used Snapchat.
Platforms that haven't grown since the last survey are Twitter and Tumblr, which have similar numbers. One of the platforms that are missing from the most recent survey is Vine. At that time, it was used by around 24 percent of teens. Vine was shut down in January 2017.
Teens who did use Facebook tend to be from households with incomes less than $30K annually. Around 70 percent of teens from those households use Facebook. Teens with higher household incomes used Facebook less, only 30 percent of teens from households that earn $75K or more use Facebook.
In the previous survey, websites like YouTube and Reddit weren't included as options. It also asked teens to state which social media websites they used and didn't use. The most recent survey only asks which ones they do use.
Race and gender also played a factor into which social networks teens use. Girls said that they preferred Snapchat, boys preferred to use YouTube. White teens were more likely to use Snapchat and black teens were more likely to use Facebook.
Impact On Teen Lives
In the survey, 45 percent of teens believe that social networks neither have a positive nor negative impact on their lives. Only 24 percent believe that social networks have a negative effect on their lives and 31 percent believe that social networks have a positive effect on their lives.
Reasons for the positive impact include the ability to connect with friends and family and the ability to find news and information. Negative reasons for social networks include bullying and the harmful impact it has on relationships.
The survey also found that 95 percent of teens have access to smartphones. In the previous survey, only 83 percent said that they have access to smartphones. This may have also contributed to the rise in teens who say they're almost constantly online. Pew found that 45 percent of teens are almost constantly online, the 2014-2015 survey found that only 24 percent of teens were constantly online
