Pew Research study of US teen internet usage finds 85% say they use YouTube, 72% use Instagram, 69% use Snapchat, while only 51% say they use Facebook
And Facebook continues to fall, according to Pew Research Center — Teenagers are more interested than ever in YouTube, home to the world's growing influencer and vlogger base.
Context & Ripple Effects
This Pew Research reading lands two months after an earlier Pew study of 18-24 year olds that already showed YouTube near-universal among young adults while Twitter trailed far behind. What is new here is the cohort cut: among teens specifically, Facebook has slipped below every rival measured — a first for the platform that defined social networking.
The number proved durable rather than a blip: Pew's 2022 deep dive had Facebook down to 32% of teens with TikTok ascendant, and the 2023 survey held it at 33% while roughly a third of teens reported using at least one platform 'almost constantly.' The 2018 data point is the opening entry in a five-year decline curve.
First-order effects
- Facebook's teen problem becomes quantified and public: with only 51% claiming usage versus YouTube's 85%, the company can no longer frame itself as the default network for the next cohort, shifting its growth story to older demographics.
- Advertisers chasing teens get a clear ranking — YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat — and budget allocation follows the measurement, pressuring Facebook's ad pitch to younger buyers.
Second-order effects
- Instagram, owned by Facebook, responds by running an aggressive yearslong campaign to win back teens, boosting teen-friendly influencers and tuning its recommendation algorithm to pull them back — effectively competing against its parent's core product for the same users.
- YouTube doubles down on the creator supply that drives its teen dominance, offering top creators millions for time-limited exclusive posting, raising the cost of talent retention across all short-video rivals including Snapchat and Instagram.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds — and the 2022-2023 surveys suggest it did — social platforms stratify by generation: feed-based networks inherit aging users while video-first platforms reset their audience with each new teen cohort, making annual teen surveys a leading indicator of platform obsolescence.
- Regulatory and advertiser attention migrates toward whichever platform holds the 'almost constantly' engagement share, since concentrated teen attention on one video service concentrates both ad dollars and scrutiny there.
The trend: Teen usage surveys are becoming the leading indicator of generational platform turnover, with video-first services displacing feed-based social networks cohort by cohort.