Tiktok, Youtube most used amongst teens: Pew Research Centre

Since launching in 2017, TikTok has soared in popularity and now research shows it is one of the most used apps amongst technologically literate teenagers.

Teenagers are choosing video-based social media platforms like TikTok and YouTube over their competitors Facebook, Instagram and Tumblr.

A new Pew Research Centre study shows that TikTok has soared in popularity with teens over the past few years with 67 percent of teens saying they use the ByteDance-owned platform.

YouTube is still the most dominant platform with 95 percent of teens surveyed said they use this site.

Meanwhile, the share of teens who say they use Facebook, a dominant social media platform among teens in the Centre’s 2014-15 survey, has plummeted from 71 percent then to 32 percent today.

Instagram and Snapchat follow TikTok and YouTube in usership at 62 percent and 59 percent respectively.

The report authors explained, “Changes in the social media landscape since 2014-15 extend beyond TikTok’s rise and Facebook’s fall. Growing shares of teens say they are using Instagram and Snapchat since then.

“Conversely, Twitter and Tumblr saw declining shares of teens who report using their platforms. And two of the platforms the Centre tracked in the earlier survey – Vine and Google+ – no longer exist.”

There are some notable demographic differences in teens’ social media choices, according to the Pew Research Centre.

For example, teen boys are more likely than teen girls to say they use YouTube, Twitch and Reddit, whereas teen girls are more likely than teen boys to use TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat. In addition, higher shares of Black and Hispanic teens report using TikTok, Instagram, Twitter and WhatsApp compared with white teens.

Although today’s teens do not use Facebook as extensively as teens in previous years, the platform still enjoys widespread usage among adults.

Other social media platforms have also seen decreases in usage among teens since 2014-15. Some 23 percent of teens now say they ever use Twitter, compared with 33 percent in 2014-15. Tumblr has seen a similar decline.

While 14 percent of teens in 2014-15 reported using Tumblr, just 5 percent of teens today say they use this platform.