Facebook falls in favour among US teens

About half ( 51%) of US teens said they use Facebook, compared with 85% for YouTube, 72% for Instagram and 69% Snapchat.

And smartphone ownership is now almost total with 95% either owning or having access to one and 45% of teens said they are online ‘almost constantly’.

Pew Research found that teens tend to use similar platforms, regardless of their demographics, although where there are exceptions it’s that lower-income teens are more likely to use Facebook than those from higher-income households.

The survey found no clear consensus among teens about the effect that social media has on young people’s lives. Minorities of teens describe the effect as mostly positive ( 31%) or mostly negative ( 24%), but the largest share ( 45%) said the effect had been neither positive nor negative.

The main reason given by those that saw it as positive was ‘connecting with family/friends’ while among those who saw social media as mostly negative cited ‘bullying/spreading rumours’.