Today’s teens are growing up not only in the digital age but also the social media age. So what’s the social media of choice? Facebook may be far and away the largest and most popular social network by sheer user numbers across the globe — but teens aren’t as impressed with it as adults are.
A new study reveals that teens’ first choice for social media is anything but Facebook. According to the Wall Street Journal, a survey by Piper Jaffray of American teens found that Instagram was the most popular social site for 33 percent of teens. In second place was Twitter with 20 percent, and following that was Snapchat with 19 percent.
Surprisingly, Facebook came in at fourth with just 15 percent of teens calling it the social network of choice! Teens may not know that they’re indirectly liking Facebook, of course, which has owned Instagram since 2012.
The survey has great credibility with regard to polling teens’ attitudes, because it has been conducted twice a year for the past 15 years.
Still, it may be helpful to look at the demographic breakdown of the teens interviewed for the survey to determine the extent of its reliability. 9,400 teens from households with an average income of $68,000 were polled, 56 percent of which were male.
Facebook’s difficulties with the teen demographic had been known since at least 2013, when the company itself admitted that it had experienced a small decline in the number of teen users. All this survey does is reinforce the perception that Facebook has trouble engaging teens as much as other social sites that have unique things to offer users.
For example, Instagram is image-heavy while Twitter is more of a firehose of rapid-fire, pithy commentary. Snapchat promotes brevity further still, with snaps being viewable for just a matter of seconds.
Time will tell if Facebook continues to experience problems retaining the teen demographic. And where will you read that news, we wonder?
