Pew: 71% of teens use Facebook, down from 77% in 2012, but still the most used social network
Kurt Wagner / Re/code :
Context & Ripple Effects
Pew's 2015 snapshot lands mid-slide: a year earlier, the share of social-media users aged 13-17 on Facebook had slipped to 88% from 94%, per Bloomberg-reported survey data. This reading puts teen Facebook use at 71%, down from 77% in 2012, yet still ahead of every rival network.
The subsequent Pew series confirms 2015 was an early waypoint rather than a dip: by 2018 the same researchers found only 15% of US teens using Facebook, with YouTube, Instagram and Snapchat on top, and its 2022 deep dive shows just 32% — making this report the moment the erosion became visible while Facebook still held the crown.
First-order effects
- Facebook retains its teen-user lead in 2015, but the direction of the number — down six points in three years — hands competitors Snapchat and Instagram a credible 'teens are leaving' narrative for recruiting young users.
Second-order effects
- Advertisers chasing the youth demographic get their first hard dataset showing Facebook's teen base thinning, pressuring budgets toward the rising networks even before preference surveys like the 6,100-teen study that later put Snapchat first and Facebook at 9%.
Third-order effects
- The pattern that holds across Pew's own series — 71%, then 51%, then 15%, then 32% — establishes teen adoption as the leading indicator of platform aging, forcing Facebook to defend relevance at the cohort level years before its broader user base showed cracks.
The trend: US teen social media is migrating from a Facebook-centered feed toward video-first and ephemeral networks, with each successive Pew survey marking another step down Facebook's cohort share.