America’s teens are using Youtube and Tiktok more and more

A study shows that video platforms are now the most popular form of social networking among young people in the United States. However, many teenagers feel they spend too much time online.

A new study has examined the social media usage habits of America’s youth.

Richard B. Levine / Imago

The now 17-year-old video platform YouTube is currently the most popular social network among young people in the USA. That shows one new study from the Pew Research Center involving 1,316 American teenagers between the ages of 13 and 17 who were interviewed about their behavior on social networks in the spring. The results show how quickly the usage habits of young people are changing and how popular video content is with Generation Z.

According to this, 95 percent of those surveyed use YouTube; one in five even said they were “almost constantly” on the Google platform. The number two among young people is Tiktok, which comes from China and has only been around since 2016: Two thirds of young people now watch short videos there.

Youtube hugely popular with teenagers

Percentage of 13-17 year olds in the US who use the following social media applications

Teenagers use the platform their friends are on

Facebook, on the other hand, is becoming increasingly unpopular with America’s youth; a result that should hardly surprise anyone. When the Pew Research Center last surveyed America’s youth about their social media usage habits in 2014/15, 71 percent said they still use Facebook. Today it is only 32 percent. On the other hand, Facebook’s sister platform, Instagram, is becoming increasingly popular with teenagers, with almost two-thirds using it today. Whatsapp, another offer from Facebook’s parent company Meta, uses 17 percent. The use of YouTube, Whatsapp, Twitch and Reddit was not taken into account in the 2015 survey.

“We can’t say exactly why fewer teenagers are using Facebook,” says Emily Vogels, a co-author of the study. In focus groups, the respondents could not have explained this either. Rather, they said they simply use the applications that most of their friends are on or other people they want to “follow.” The pandemic has reinforced this behavior, says Vogels. “Without the ability to connect with their friends in real life, they looked to where they could find them online to maintain those relationships.”

Girls love Tiktok and boys love Youtube

The study also shows differences in usage habits between the sexes: While boys prefer to use YouTube, Twitch and Reddit, girls prefer Tiktok, Instagram and Snapchat. There are also differences in terms of ethnicity: teenagers with Latin American roots use Whatsapp more than others, while African-American teenagers spend more time on Tiktok. Reddit is particularly popular among white youth.

A third of young people spend “too much” time on social media

“I spend . . . Time spent on social networks», survey among 13 to 17 year olds, in %

The study also shows that young people in the USA are now surfing the Internet more. Not only did more teenagers say they were online every day compared to 2014/15 (97 percent versus 92 percent). The proportion of those who are “almost constantly online” has almost doubled to 46 percent. As already in previous investigations This time it was also shown that young people with Latin American roots in particular stated much more frequently that they were “always online” (55 percent versus 37 percent).

Worryingly, more than half of those surveyed said they found it difficult to stop using social media; the proportion was greater among girls than among boys (41 versus 31 percent). A third of young people said they spend too much time on the platforms.

The NZZ correspondent Marie-Astrid Langer follow on twitter.


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