Ninety-five percent of teens have access to a smartphone, and 45 percent of teens are almost constantly online, but younger Internet users do not connect on Facebook as much as their older peers do, suggests a Pew Research Center study. Although Facebook dominated social media across all age groups over the past decade, it has taken a backseat to YouTube, Instagram and Snapchat among today’s teens. Facebook is still used by more than half of all teens aged 13 to 17, the survey results indicate. Fifty-one percent of those polled reported using the social networking service. Yet a whopping 85 percent reported actively using YouTube, 72 percent said they regularly used Instagram, and 69 percent were on Snapchat.
acebook did outpace Twitter, used by just 32 percent of teens surveyed, and Tumblr, which drew only 9 percent. Reddit came in at 7 percent. As for which of the social media services the teen survey participants used the most, Snapchat came in highest with 35 percent identifying it as their most frequent choice, while YouTube followed at 32 percent, and Instagram at 15 percent. Facebook was a distant fourth with just 10 percent of respondents identifying it as the service they used most often. By contrast, Twitter had just 3 percent of respondents in its corner. Reddit snagged 1 percent, and Tumblr less than 1 percent.
Facebook was the dominant social media service among teens just three years ago, when 71 percent said they used it, and 41 percent said they used it most often. Fifty-two percent of teens used Instagram, and 20 percent used it most often. Google+ and Vine, which were used by 33 percent and 24 percent of teens respectively in the 2014-15 survey, weren’t even included in the latest report. By contrast, the current top-ranking service, YouTube, wasn’t even named among the most popular online platform choices of teens in the past report.
