YouTube Easily Trumping TikTok Among Teens

Photo Credit: Pew Research

Pew Research Center reveals data about the top social media platforms among teens, with YouTube ranking surprisingly higher than TikTok.Amid growing national concern about technology’s impact on young people, teens are as online as ever. Most teens use social media and have a smartphone, and nearly half of those surveyed say they’re online almost constantly.

Pew Research Center conducted an online survey of 1,391 teens in the United States from September 18 to October 10, 2024, through Ipsos. Ipsos recruited the teens through their parents, who were part of its KnowledgePanel, a probability-based web panel recruited through national, random sampling of residential addresses.

The survey was weighted to represent U.S. teens ages 13 to 17 who live with their parents by age, gender, race and ethnicity, household income, and other factors. This research was reviewed and approved by Advarra, an external institutional review board, with an independent committee of experts specializing in helping to protect the rights of research participants.

Interestingly, YouTube tops the list of the online platforms most frequented by teens. Nine in ten teens report using the site, slightly down from 95% in 2022. TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat remain widely used among this demographic, with roughly six in ten teens saying they use TikTok and Instagram, and 55% saying they use Snapchat.Facebook and X (Twitter) have declined sharply in usage over the past decade. Ony 32% of teens say they use Facebook, down from 71% in 2014 and 2015 — though the share of teens who use the site has remained stable in recent years. Meanwhile, 17% say they use the former Twitter, only around half of the share who used the site a decade ago (33%) and down from 23% in 2022.

Around a quarter (23%) of teens say they use WhatsApp, up 6% since 2022. Meanwhile, 14% of teens use Reddit, a share that has remained stable in the past few years. As for Threads, Meta’s answer to Twitter launched in 2023, only 6% of teens report using it.

Roughly half of teens surveyed say they go on Instagram or Snapchat every day, including around one in ten who say they’re on each of these platforms (YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, and Facebook) almost constantly. The amount of teens who say they use Instagram almost constantly has increased from 8% in 2023 to 12% today. Still, relatively few teens report using Facebook daily, at 20%. But across all five of these platforms, one-third of teens use at least one of these sites almost constantly.

By gender, teen girls are more likely than boys to say they use TikTok almost constantly (19% vs. 13%). And teen boys are more likely than girls to use YouTube as often (19% vs. 11%). Unlike last year, a similar share of boys and girls (13% vs. 12%) today say they use Snapchat almost constantly. There are no notable gender differences in the shares of teens who report using Instagram and Facebook almost constantly.By race, roughly a quarter of Black (28%) and Hispanic (25%) teens say they use TikTok almost constantly. This share drops to 8% among white teens. Black and Hispanic teens are also more likely than white teens to say they constantly use YouTube or Instagram. There are little to no racial or ethnic differences in the shares of teens visiting Snapchat and Facebook constantly.

By household income, Facebook remains more commonly used among teens in lower-income households. To that end, 45% of teens in households earning less than $30,000 a year say they use Facebook.

That number drops to 35% among teens in households earning between $30,000 and $74,999 a year, and 29% among teens with household incomes of $75,000 or more. Teens in lower-income households are also more likely than those in the highest-income households to say they use TikTok (73% vs. 59%).