Teens Turning Away From Facebook, Pew Research Center Finds

In the view of teenagers, it’s definitely “your father’s Facebook,” a recent Pew Research Center report released Thursday finds.

In a survey conducted between March 7 to April 10, 51 percent of teenagers ages 13-17 said they regularly use Facebook, compared to more than 70 percent in a similar 2014-2015 survey, the center reported.

According to the survey, YouTube is now the most popular platform and is regularly used by 85 percent of the demographic, followed by Instagram with 72 percent and Snapchat with 69 percent.

Facebook dropped to fourth place, followed by Twitter at just 32 percent, Tumblr at nine percent and Reddit at seven percent, according to the center.

YouTube did not even place in the previous Pew study, published in April 2015, but rose in popularity among teens in the last three years, overtaking Facebook’s number one position then at 71 percent.

The new report shows that 95 percent of teens own a smartphone and 45 percent say they are online on a “near-constant basis.”

A majority of those surveyed, 45 percent, could not say if their experiences with social media were either positive or negative.

Of the remaining 55 percent of survey respondents, 31 percent rated their experiences as “mostly positive,” while 24 percent said they viewed the technology as “mostly negative,” according to the report.

As Facebook’s popularity dropped by around 20 percentage points in the last three years, both Snapchat and Instagram grew at a similar rate.

Twitter and Tumblr stayed almost level in both studies.

Pew notes in the report that the wording of some of the questions changed in between the two studies and that YouTube was not given as an option in the 2015 study.

Another interesting characteristic found in both reports is that Facebook use is more popular among lower incomes.

According to the surveys, Facebook is more likely the platform visited by teens in families earning $30,000 a year or less with 70 percent, while 56 percent of teens in families making between $30,000-$75,000 use it.

Just 36 percent of teens in families making above $75,000 report using that service, the report states.

The survey also found differences in the use of social media platforms by gender and race.

According to the report, girls are more likely to use Snapchat than boys by a 2-1 margin, while boys are more likely to use YouTube by a similar margin.

Whites are also more likely to use Snapchat (41 percent) compared to Hispanics (29 percent) and blacks (23 percent), according to the report.

Black teens, Pew reported, are more likely to use Facebook by more than 3-1 over whites, 26 percent compared to just seven percent.