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A newly released Pew Research poll found more teenagers than ever are hooked on social media and would find it difficult to detach themselves from these platforms.
About 50 percent of teenagers surveyed in the U.S. said in the survey that they are almost constantly online. The number has more than doubled since 2015, when about 24 percent said they were almost constantly online.
The survey questioned 1,300 teens from 13 to 17 and found that TikTok, which is produced by China’s ByteDance, is now one of the most popular platforms for teenagers. About 70 percent of teens say they use TikTok and 16 percent say they use the app “almost constantly.”
The rise of TikTok has resulted in teens turning away from Meta Platform’s Facebook.
Facebook is down from 71 percent in 2015 to 32 percent today in teen usage.
YouTube is the most popular website for teenagers, and 95 percent told Pew that they use the website. Meta Platform’s Instagram and Snapchat are also used by about six in 10 teenagers.
The study found that black and Hispanic teenagers are more likely to use TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, and WhatsApp compared with white teenagers.
Social Media Today said the Pew poll shows some danger for “legacy social media networks” like Facebook and Twitter. They seem to be losing their appeal with younger audiences as “video platforms gain more attention, and alter user attention spans and habitual behaviors in entirely new ways.”
“The popularity of TikTok is essentially forcing other apps to play catch-up, because it’s evolving how people view what content should be,” the website said. “Those that don’t look to move into line with these trends will eventually lose out—so really, it’s likely less of a conscious choice to copy TikTok and other popular apps, as it is a necessary shift to keep up with changing user behaviors.”
It’s All About The #BOTTOMLINE
Reports emerged last year that showed Facebook conducted studies into its Instagram app to see how posts could affect young users. The Wall Street Journal reported that these researchers “repeatedly” found that Instagram is harmful to a sizable percentage of teen girls.
“We make body image issues worse for one in three teen girls,” the research found, according to the paper. “Teens blame Instagram for increases in the rate of anxiety and depression. This reaction was unprompted and consistent across all groups.”
The paper said at the time that it viewed internal documents from the company and found that “Facebook has made minimal efforts to address these issues and plays them down in public.”
Facebook, which changed its name to Meta Platforms in June, said the app’s effects on teen well-being is likely “quite small.”
TREND FORECAST: The dramatic increase in social media use by teenagers will negatively impact an entire generation of Americans and could create a public health crisis that the country has never seen and doesn’t understand.
The Mayo Clinic’s website cites a 2019 study that found 12-to 15-year-olds in the U.S. who spent more than three hours a day using social media could be at heightened risk for mental health problems.
The health clinic also cites a study from the United Kingdom that found teens who used social media more than three times a day were more at risk for mental health problems as they got older.
Social media is like a drug, and, like drugs, can be hard to quit. About 54 percent of teenagers polled by Pew said it would be “at least somewhat hard” to turn off their iPhones.
The New York Times reported in April that researchers in Britain analyzed a survey of 84,000 people of all ages and discovered “two distinct periods of adolescence when heavy use of social media spurred lower ratings of ‘life satisfaction.’”
These ages include the first round of puberty for girls (11-13 years old), and 14 to 15 years old for boys. Both sexes can be impacted negatively by social media at 19, the report said. (See “FACEBOOK WORLD 2021: AN ARTIFICIAL REALITY THAT WILL DESTROY THE HUMAN SPIRIT AND COMMERCIAL REAL ESTATE” and “PULL THE PLUG ON TECH POWER OR THE PLUG WILL BE PULLED ON YOU.”
For many, it has never been cheaper and easier to get online. About 95 percent polled say they have smartphones and another 90 percent say they have computers. About 97 percent of teenagers say they use the internet daily, compared with 92 percent in 2015.
Common Sense Media released a recent survey that found children who spend between five to seven hours a day on social media could become addicted. During these studies, the “rewards center” of their brains light up when they notice that they got a lot of likes on their own photos, researchers said.