Teenagers ditch Facebook in favour of TikTok – Pew Research

In a recent report by Pew Research, a nonpartisan American think tank based in Washington, TikTok has established itself as one of the top online platforms for U.S. teens, while the share of teens who use Facebook has fallen sharply.

Note that even though this 2022 survey report on Teens, Social Media and Technology, looks at the US alone, one can say it is no different from the behaviour in Africa.

According to the new Pew Research Center survey of American teenagers ages 13 to 17, TikTok has rocketed in popularity since its initial release in America in 2016 and now is a top social media platform for teens among the platforms covered in this survey. In 2021, TikTok beat Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger to be the most downloaded app, same as 2018 to 2020.

According to the report and the diagram above,

“Some 67% of teens say they ever use TikTok, with 16% of all teens saying they use it almost constantly. Meanwhile, the share of teens who say they use Facebook, a dominant social media platform among teens in the Center’s 2014-15 survey, has plummeted from 71% then to 32% today.”

“YouTube tops the 2022 teen online landscape among the platforms covered in the Center’s new survey, as it is used by 95% of teens. TikTok is next on the list of platforms that were asked about in this survey (67%), followed by Instagram and Snapchat, which are both used by about six-in-ten teens. After those platforms come Facebook with 32% and smaller shares who use Twitter, Twitch, WhatsApp, Reddit and Tumblr.”

Pew Research Centre

From the diagram, it is obvious to see how the likes of Instagram and Snapchat are copying TikTok features to try to retain their users and even catch up with TikTok. It recently reached a head when the likes of Instagram Influencer Kim Kardashian, and her sister Kylie Jenner expressed strong dissatisfaction with a new TikTok-like feature that Instgarm just launched.

The study also showed that when asked the frequency with which teens are on each of the top five online platforms: YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat and Facebook, 35% of teens say they are using at least one of them “almost constantly.”

Teen TikTok and Snapchat users are particularly engaged with these platforms, followed by teen YouTube users in close pursuit. A quarter of teens who use Snapchat or TikTok say they use these apps almost constantly, and a fifth of teen YouTube users say the same. When looking at teens overall, 19% say they use YouTube almost constantly, 16% say this about TikTok, and 15% about Snapchat.

This report confirms the challenges that Mark Zuckerberg has been having with the dwindling popularity of facebook among teenagers. It seems most of them think that Facebook is for oldies, as from 40 and above and they do not want to be associated with the old school.

These findings are consistent with Facebook’s own internal reporting, according to documents leaked by whistleblower Frances Haugen last year. The internal report from Facebook showed that its struggle to attract users under the age of 30 has been ongoing for years, dating back to as early as 2012.

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