Survey: Netflix and YouTube account for 70.7% of teens' daily video consumption in US, and Instagram is now teens' most-used social platform, eclipsing Snapchat
Our 36th semi-annual Taking Stock With Teens survey included results from 8,600 teens across 48 states with an average age of 16.
Context & Ripple Effects
Piper Jaffray's semi-annual teen survey lands mid-race: Pew's mid-2018 teen study had already put YouTube at 85% usage with Instagram (72%) edging Snapchat (69%), and an earlier spring survey of 18-24 year olds still had Snapchat on top at 78%. This readout makes the crossover explicit — Instagram is now teens' most-used social platform — while confirming that daily video time is a two-horse field, with Netflix and YouTube together taking 70.7%.
The reason this matters beyond the headline numbers is that teen preference has proven predictive: within four years, Pew's 2022 snapshot shows TikTok at 67% having squeezed both Instagram (62%) and Snapchat (59%), with Facebook down to 32%. The 2018 crossover was the first domino in a reshuffling that is still running.
First-order effects
- Advertisers chasing the 16-year-old demographic get a clear reallocation signal: brand budgets and influencer spend tilt toward Instagram, while Snapchat loses its 'teens' default platform' pitch at exactly the moment its user base skews youngest.
- Video ad buyers face a de facto duopoly for teen attention — Netflix and YouTube absorbing 70.7% of daily consumption leaves TV networks and smaller streaming services fighting over under 30% of the same hours.
Second-order effects
- Snapchat is forced into product and growth counter-moves to win back the cohort it just lost leadership of, while Instagram doubles down on teen retention mechanics — the relationship record shows it later tuned its recommendation algorithm and boosted teen-friendly influencers specifically to pull teens back.
- The two-horse video split creates the opening TikTok exploits: by 2022 it sits at 67% teen usage, and the 2023 follow-up shows it holding 63% while Snapchat (60%) edges back past Instagram (59%) — proof that the 'most-used' crown is contestable every cycle.
Third-order effects
- Teen surveys become a leading indicator the whole industry plans around: each Piper/Pew cycle resets assumptions about where the next cohort's attention lands, and platforms like Instagram respond by engineering their algorithms toward teen re-engagement rather than organic preference.
- If consolidation of teen video time around one or two distributors holds, structural questions follow about what those gatekeepers surface — including the relationship-recorded finding that more than one in five videos YouTube suggests to new users is AI-generated 'slop', putting recommendation quality itself on the agenda.
The trend: US teen attention keeps concentrating into fewer video and social platforms, with each survey cycle crowning a new leader and forcing the incumbents to engineer their way back.