While the use of social networking services (SNS) among American teens is increasing, Facebook’s place is being jeopardized.
According to a survey report by the Pew Research Center, an American research institution released on the 10th (local time), one-third of Americans currently use SNS.
What is noteworthy here is the content of a survey of 1,316 American teens between the ages of 13 and 17. According to the survey, 67% of respondents said they had used TikTok at least once.
Looking at the SNS usage rankings by teenagers, the 1st place was YouTube, which 95% of respondents answered. YouTube was established in 2005 as a video sharing website.
After that, TikTok took second place with 67%. TikTok is a short video platform launched in China in 2017. TikTok, which has been open for 5 years, is following 17-year-old YouTube.
It was followed by Instagram (62%) and Snapchat (59%). All of them have in common that photos and videos are the main social media platforms.
On the other hand, teenagers who say they use Facebook have plummeted by 40% since the same survey was conducted from 2014 to 2015.
In 2013, the percentage of teenagers using Facebook was 77%. Since then, the number of teenage users has declined sharply. From 2014 to 2015, when 71% of respondents said they had used Facebook, about half of them went out.
The biggest reason is that users are moving to YouTube and Instagram, where users are rapidly increasing recently. Until a few years ago, Facebook was the most used social media platform.
However, according to an October 2021 report by The Verge, Facebook is aging. The reality is that young people in their teens and twenties perceive Facebook as a space used by seniors in their 40s and older. It is said that the negative perception of Facebook’s posts mixed with boring content and advertisements was strengthened.
Next, the platform with the highest usage rate regardless of age was found to be YouTube. 95% of American teens who responded to the survey said they use YouTube. In a survey conducted for adults in 2021, YouTube also took first place. This means that users’ preferences are changing from text (text)-oriented SNS to photo or video platforms.
On the other hand, there was also a gender difference in the SNS media selection of teenagers. Teenage girls used TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat a lot. Teenage boys used YouTube and Twitch more.
According to a Pew Research Center survey, 95% of adolescents said they use a smartphone. The percentage of young people who said they were almost constantly online also surged from 2014 to 46%, more than double the 24% in 2015, the center said.
The reason why teenagers have been online for a long time is largely due to the impact of COVID-19. According to the report’s co-author Emily Vogel, the pandemic is the reason teenagers spend most of their time on social networking platforms.
“Without being able to interact face-to-face with other people,” Vogel said, “they went online looking for friends. We are continuing to communicate online,” she explained.
As teenagers, who had to communicate face-to-face with their friends, were unable to do so, they naturally moved to online communication channels. As a result, 97% of teens use the Internet every day, and 46% spend most of their day online.
It is a sad reality that Facebook is being pushed behind by social media that handles photos and videos, but it is an urgent time for a major change to regain its reputation.
