Number of teens using Facebook crashes as YouTube becomes platform of choice

midian182

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In brief: Are you old enough to remember when Facebook usurped Myspace as the cool social media platform everyone should be using? If the answer is yes, you're probably still on Zuckerberg's product, unlike almost 70% of teens, who prefer the likes of YouTube, TikTok, and Snapchat.

The bad news for Facebook came from a survey by Pew Research Center. It questioned 1,316 U.S. teens between the ages of 13 and 17 about their online habits and found that just 32% of them use the Facebook app.

The results are a stark contrast to Pew Research Center's survey in 2015, which found a massive 71% of teens used Facebook at that time. But the social network has seen this demographic decline yearly since then. Despite CEO Mark Zuckerberg calling for the platform to refocus its efforts toward serving younger users last year, more teens have abandoned it in droves.

While not really a social media site, the most popular platform among participants was YouTube, which 95% of surveyed teens said they use—19% confessed to being on the video-streaming platform "almost constantly."

Tik-Tok was the unsurprising runner-up, with 67% saying they use it and 16% admitted they're on the app almost constantly. But it wasn't all bad news for Meta; Instagram, which it owns alongside Facebook, took third place with 62% of teens using it, 10% of whom say they're scrolling through pictures and videos almost all the time.

Snapchat was another service to see its use among teens increase since 2015, going from 41% to 59%. Twitter and Tumblr both fell, by 10% and 9%, respectively. Twitch (20%), WhatsApp (17%), and Reddit (14%) weren't included in the survey seven years ago.

There are also some platforms from 2015 that have ceased to exist: 33% of teens back then used Google+, and 24% used Vine.

Another part of the recent survey asked about what devices teens owned or had access to. Smartphones were number one with 95%, up from 73% in 2015. This was followed by desktops/laptops at 90%, up from 87%, and games consoles with 80%, down from 81%.

Over half the teens (54%) said they would find it hard to give up social media, and 36% said they spent too much time on it. As for the number who use the internet daily, that rose from 92% in 2015 to 97%.

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FB and TikTok are proof that you can make a crap app and still make a great success. It's obviously much better to invest in propaganda than to waste money on salaries for programmers and designers.

When I saw FB for the first time I thought "Did they not employ a single sane designer there"? It looked as if first grade elementary school children made their first attempt at creating a web site. Not that it changed much since. Non-intuitive GUI that you have to learn by heart with time.

Now, when I played a TikTok video for the first time I thought "Screw the designers, didn't they hire any programmers"? If preschool children made that media player, it would probably be more functional.

It has slowly improved in the last few months, but considering the number of users it already has, it's clear they didn't come there for the ease of use, or quality of design. But because it was the only one in China, so it had a lot of users there. Then it spread all over the world thanks to propaganda.

FB is crap, and yet it looks like technology from the future compared to TikTok.
 
Title should be worded better, as it could imply that they're using YT instead of FB as a social media site. Which would be a laughable correlation to suggest.
 
The only thing waiting for me back on Facebook is all the racists I went to high school with. I left in 2016 to never return. Oh and if your mobile app or game requires a Facebook account. Yeah, I won't be using your app.
 
Facebook is a great tool actually.

It lets finally find out which of your friends, co-workers, neighbors (and even extended family members) are racists, misogynists and xenophobes!!

You deal with them and then you quit that septic tank forever!!
 
The number of people in the comments that cant handle people having opposing opinions.....LMFAO.
Yeah its tragic when you can't threaten to kill thousands of people for having free thoughts the church did not bless
See, you were so close to understanding then went early 2000s edgy boi instead.
Hmmm, it's almost as if everything social is a fad and fads come and go.

Same as it ever was, same as it ever was.
No, everything must stay under the same megacorporation forever!!!1!!
 
Yeah, Facebook is all old people arguing. By old people I mean people my age. It is sad. I use it for Marketplace and my neighborhood HOA group. Seems to bring the worst in people.
 
I cant wait until shark "f"uckerbergs company dies. he doesn't deserve anything he has. pay me for selling my data bud. matter of fact, all companies, including microsoft, should pay me a percentage for selling my data.
 
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