Facebook is still the favored social network among teens

Facebook is still the favored social network among teens

According to a new study from the Pew Research Center, Facebook is still the most popular social network among all age groups, with 71% of teenagers using it.

Remember when people were speculating that Facebook’s popularity was diminishing among teenagers, because their parents were on the network? Evidently, that was just a bunch of white noise. According to a new study from the Pew Research Center, Facebook is still the most popular social network among all age groups, with 71% of teenagers using it.

The Pew Research study covered a lot of ground on the topic of teen social media habits. Most of the findings of the report are not terribly surprising, like the fact that three-quarters of teens “have access to a smartphone,” or that the rise of mobile devices has impacted just how much time teenagers spend online. Indeed, the study found that roughly a quarter of teenagers are online “almost constantly,” while 92% go online at least once a day.

That’s obviously a sea change from where things were 15 or 20 years ago, but it’s a conclusion that many would have predicted 10 years ago when Facebook first launched. The social network made being online an essential component of friendship and peer interaction, and that trend has only grown in the years since.

Facebook itself, meanwhile, has proven to be quite a durable property. Not too long ago, there was some speculation that teens were ditching Facebook for newer social networking apps like Snapchat and Instagram. Many parents, teachers, and other adults are on Facebook these days, and that fact has made the social network less “cool” than it used to be among teenagers.

As the Pew Research study shows, though, teens who have stopped using Facebook are still in the minority. Snapchat and Instagram have indeed grown in popularity, with 51% and 41% of those surveyed using them, respectively. However, at 71%, Facebook is still the king of the social networking industry. And while most teenagers admitted to using a broad range of social media platforms to keep in touch with their friends, the results still skewed toward Facebook among teens who only use one or two platforms.

Why is Facebook still dominating the conversation in social media, especially if kids and teenagers don’t think it’s “cool”? The most logical explanation is that the site has simply become too big to ignore. While different people might spend a significant amount of time on Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, or other platforms, Facebook is one network they all tend to have in common. Therefore, if someone (be tjey a teenager or adult) wants to keep in touch with all of their friends or family members, Facebook is the easiest place to do it.

The Pew Research study was conducted online, using a sample size of 1,066 American teenagers.

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