2022 Pew Research: Technology & Social Media Use Among Teens
How much are teens using technology? Where are they spending their time online? A Pew Research Center report lays out the current terrain in the “ever-changing” landscape of social media. A survey of American teens ages 13 to 17 has found that TikTok has shot up the popularity chart “since its North American debut several years ago,” while Facebook use has plummeted from 71% use among teens in the Center’s 2014-15 survey to 32% today.
In 2022, YouTube was the most popular platform among teens, with 95% of teens reporting that they use it. TikTok was in second place, with 67% of teens saying they ever use it, and 16% of all teens reporting they use TikTok “almost constantly.” Instagram and Snapchat were both used by about 60% of teens, followed by Facebook, Twitter, Twitch, WhatsApp, Reddit, and Tumblr.
Of the top five platforms – YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, and Facebook – more than one-in-three, a full 35%, of teens say they are using one of them “almost constantly.” TikTok and Snapchat users are the most engaged with those platforms, followed closely by teen YouTube users.
Social media use is directly linked to access to technology in general. The internet is firmly established as a fact of daily life. The number of teens who use the internet daily has risen slightly, from 92% to 97%.
What has increased dramatically in the past seven years is the amount of teen internet use. The share of teens who say they use the internet almost constantly has roughly doubled: 46% of teens say they use the internet almost constantly, up from only about a quarter (24%) of teenagers who said the same in 2014-15.
Smartphones are nearly as omnipresent as the internet in teens’ lives. In 2022, nearly all teens ages 13-17 have access to a smartphone. The number of teens with smartphones has risen 22 percentage points since 2014-2015, from 73% to 95%. This number has increased dramatically even while access to computers and other technologies remained the same.
As teen access to smartphones has increased dramatically, and social media use is increasing at pace, it begs the question what this increased social media use is doing to teen mental health.
Read the full Pew Research report here.
Vogels, Emily et al. “Teens, Social Media and Technology 2022.” Pew Research Center, 10 Aug 2022, https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2022/08/10/teens-social-media-and-technology-2022/#:~:text=Across%20these%20five%20platforms%2C%2035,one%20of%20them%20almost%20constantly.
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