BURSTYouTube remains the most widely used online platform by U.S. teenagers, followed by TikTok, Snapchat and Instagram, according to a new survey by Pew Research Center.
Some 93 percent of teens between 13 and 17 years old said they use YouTube, while 63 percent said they use TikTok, 60 percent said they use Snapchat and 59 percent said they use Instagram, the survey found.
Facebook and Twitter, now known as X, have declined substantially in popularity among teens in recent years. Only 33 percent in the Pew poll said they use Facebook, while 20 percent said they use X.
Facebook dominated teens’ social media use in surveys conducted between 2014 and 2015, with 71 percent saying they used the platform. Twitter was never quite as popular as Facebook, with just a third of teens saying they used the platform at the time, but it has fallen steadily in popularity since.
About 7 in 10 teens said they visit YouTube daily, with some 16 percent saying they are on the platform “almost constantly,” according to the Pew survey. Another 58 percent said they visit TikTok daily, and 17 percent said they use the video-based social media app constantly.
About half of teens also said they use Snapchat and Instagram every day, while just 19 percent said the same about Facebook.
The use of social media by teens and the guardrails — or lack thereof — in place to protect children online has long been an area of concern for lawmakers.
Last month, a former Meta employee testified to a Senate panel that top executives at the parent company of Facebook and Instagram dismissed warnings that teens on Instagram were facing unwanted sexual advances and widespread bullying.
The allegations came two years after former Facebook employee Frances Haugen, who revealed internal company research, including reports about the impact of Instagram on teens, similarly appeared before Congress.
The explosion in popularity of TikTok, which is owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, has also recently sparked bipartisan concern among lawmakers.
The Pew Research Center poll was conducted through Ipsos between Sept. 26 and Oct. 23 with 1,453 U.S. teens between the ages of 13 and 17 and had a margin of error of 3.2 percentage points.