It’s no secret that teens use Instagram, YouTube and Snapchat more than Facebook lately. Now there is a study proving that US teenagers are deleting Facebook for the three popular social media platforms.
In a recent study conducted by the Pew Research Center, only 51% of US teens between the ages of 13-17 currently use Facebook. Amongst the 750 teens surveyed, 85% of them now use YouTube as their primary social media outlet, followed by Instagram at 72% and Snapchat at 69%.
For those who are unfamiliar with the two picture-sharing platforms, the social media app Instagram, which has been owned by Facebook since 2012, lets users post their favorite pictures directly to their Instagram feed. The app gives users the ability to follow friends and family and similarly to Facebook, you can “like” or “comment” on other people’s pictures in your Instagram feed.
Snapchat on the other hand has a different concept. The app allows users to send pictures to their friends and set a time for how long they can view it between 1-10 seconds and then the image permanently disappears. Users are also notified if the recipient replays or screenshots the picture/video sent. Users can also post “snap stories,” which are kind of like Facebook statuses but with just pictures and videos. All of the user’s friends can see your story and the user can see what friends watched their story.
Today 95% of teens in the US own smartphones, this is actually a 22 percent increase in teen smartphone sales since 2015. The Pew Research Center believes that the dramatic increase over the past three years was a big factor in the social media shift from Facebook to YouTube, Snapchat and Instagram.
The survey is also consistent with previous studies that showed, while most teens use the same social media outlets as their peers, low-income teens seemed to have preferred Facebook more than teens from a higher-income household. This could be for a number of reasons.
Today, companies will actually pay teens and young adults to promote their products through Instagram if they have a high amount of followers. Companies like, Sugar Bear Hair, Fit Tea and Fab Fit Fun are just a few of the many companies that pay Instagram users who have thousands of followers to promote their product by posting pictures of them using their product.
When it comes to the effect that social media has had on the lives of the 750 teens surveyed, the Pew Research Center could not find a clear consensus among the teens. About a third believe social media has affected them in a mostly positive way, and a quarter say it has been mostly negative. Finally, the largest group, 45% of teens say that social media has not affected them negatively nor positively.
The Future of Social Media
YouTube, Instagram and Snapchat give teens the chance to really see into each other’s lives. On YouTube, teens can watch video blogs created by other teens and young adults talking about their lives and adventures, or they can even watch tutorials on how to master their Fortnite skills. Teens are able to subscribe to a person’s channel if they want to be notified when the account uploads a new video, or they can create their own.
Snapchat lets teens see what their friends are doing and at what time. They can also post pictures and videos with friends using various filters and geotags so you can let your friends know where you are. Finally, Instagram has an array of filters and editing tools for teens to use to edit their pictures however they want and post it so friends and family can see what they’ve been up to.
Social media gives us the ability to connect with anyone, anywhere at any time, and teens today love to know where their friends are and what they’re doing at all times, and they use these platforms to do just that.
Featured image via Flickr/Mike MacKenzie
