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Gen Z is Over Facebook, Finds Pew Research. But YouTube Dominates Among Teens (nbcnews.com) 57

NBC News reports: Facebook, once the go-to social media platform for many, has plummeted in popularity among younger users, according to a new Pew Research Center survey.... The share of 13- to 17-year-olds who said they use Facebook dropped from 71% in the 2015 study to 32% today, Pew found.

As Facebook's popularity sinks, YouTube has become the dominating platform among teens, who are also using social media apps like TikTok, Snapchat and [Meta-owned] Instagram... While Facebook still beats out Twitter among Gen Z teens, Snapchat and Instagram have dwarfed its popularity. Sixty-two percent of teens use Instagram and 59% use Snapchat, according to Pew. TikTok also beats Facebook in popularity, with 67% of respondents saying they use the short-form video app, Pew reported....

The most popular platform among 13- to 17-year-olds is YouTube, which is used by 95% of teens, the research found.

There's an interesting graph showing trends in Pew's announcement. It's handy way to visualize that over the last seven years usage has dropped for Facebook, Twitter, and Tumbler — while usage increased for Instagram and Snapchat.

But YouTube hovers above them all with 95% usage.
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Gen Z is Over Facebook, Finds Pew Research. But YouTube Dominates Among Teens

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  • by XXongo ( 3986865 ) on Sunday August 14, 2022 @10:41AM (#62788430) Homepage
    Youtube isn't really a social media platform, so I don't know why it's there.

    I will bet that google is number one popular platform in use among teenagers, if you count apps that AREN'T social media.

    • What? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 14, 2022 @10:50AM (#62788462)

      You can post videos, you can comment, you can "like", you can "follow"... what part of this spells "not a social medium"?

      • by pjt33 ( 739471 )

        It can be used as a social media platform, but it can also be used as a music streaming platform. Maybe the survey also asked what percentage of the respondents upload content to each platform, but that information isn't in the summary, and it would help the readers to determine whether the comparison is apples to apples or chalk to cheese.

        • Re: What? (Score:4, Funny)

          by PPH ( 736903 ) on Sunday August 14, 2022 @11:06AM (#62788514)
          I just use YouTube to wrench on my beater cars.
          • I really enjoy urban exploration videos and even give money to a few via Patreon. Some channels that are worth watching:

            https://www.youtube.com/c/Expl... [youtube.com]
            https://www.youtube.com/c/TheP... [youtube.com]
            https://www.youtube.com/c/Brok... [youtube.com]

            Hoovie's Garage and the Car Wizard are entertaining.

            • by hey! ( 33014 )

              YouTube has reached a kind of critical mass where any topic you might watch to search for has a video. Think of any random topic -- "How to dress your dog like Darth Vader": check. "Thunderstruck on a Toy Piano": check. "Teaching a cat to flush the toilet": yep. "How to build a gyrocopter": plenty. "Yoyo tricks on a Pogo Stick:: Youtube has you covered [youtube.com]. If it's something that might interest someone, it's there.

              This rich trove of subject matter plus Google's algorithmic chops makes YouTube an irresistibl

              • by PPH ( 736903 )

                I use YouTube to watch videos. Not search for stuff. For that, YouTube, Google and Bing suck.

                Gen-Z kids have been educated in information literacy,

                Not really. They have been conditioned to overlook the background information curation process. If you know it's there, you can still find it. But if it isn't politically correct, search isn't likely to find it. Gen-Z doesn't seem to get that.

                • by hey! ( 33014 )

                  Depends on your state. But as a whole they're better informed than boomers.

          • PPH, i do that too and there is a T-shirt for us video-educated mechanics:
            https://www.ebay.com/itm/28449... [ebay.com]

            Join the group !

        • They are quite a bit more vigorous than Fecebook in policing conspiracy theories, neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and similar, so they're not really a proper social network if they don't feature and enable those guys.
      • Re:What? (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Orgasmatron ( 8103 ) on Sunday August 14, 2022 @11:32AM (#62788578)

        The part where you can access the core features of the site anonymously.

        I use youtube, but I don't "use" it.

        I don't chat or read chats, I don't comment or read comments. I don't like or dislike, or pay any attention to how many likes or dislikes a video has, or even how many views it has. I don't autoplay the next video, I rarely pay any attention to recommended videos, rarer still do I click on them.

        My youtube account exists solely as a cookie on a server in a rack somewhere, generated by a laughably old seamonkey binary viewed over an X session one time years ago, and even then it is just there so that youtube-dl doesn't choke on age-restricted videos. Most of my youtube viewing happens after youtube-dl has downloaded a show and my script has entered it into my Kodi database. The stuff that doesn't fit into an episodic paradigm is managed by a cron job that scrapes metadata out of search pages and alerts me to new videos, which are watched through a browser window with ephemeral cookies.

        Real social media sites don't allow anything like that sort of hands-off access. Maybe twitter - I know I can read most tweets if someone sends me a link, but I've never cared enough to see if I can create an offline "subscribe and follow" system for that site.

        • The part where you can access the core features of the site anonymously.

          You can, but the only social features you can access anonymously are things which everyone knows are public. You can't interact with anything except playback or reading functions without logging in. You can access a lot of Faceboot's functionality without logging in as well, like reading menus, or being tracked. (But then, it's not like Youtube doesn't build shadow profiles on users, it absolutely does. It absolutely keeps track of what you're watching, and further, it will figure out that you live in the s

        • What interest most of the people who do this kind of comparison between "social media" is which service is the best at keeping eyeball glued on it, that could then be sold to gullible corporations that think they make a good deal by subjecting said glued eyeballs to ads.

          From their point of view, Youtube is just another attention gathering website/platform among other, with its own ecosystem of "influencer" (initially, this was marketoid terminology for "mini-celebrity that a lot of people pay attention to")

        • "The part where you can access the core features of the site anonymously."

          By this definition, TIkTok is not social media. The recommendation engine does not require a login; it will work off whether videos are watched to the end or swiped away quickly for just the current session.

          • What is the core feature of tiktok? What is the core feature of youtube?

            In my opinion, youtube's core feature is watching videos, while tiktok's core feature is creating videos.

            The difference might not make any sense to people who don't have memory of the internet before youtube, but I think it matters when the question is social media. Ultimately, there isn't a concrete definition and an objective test. In a practical sense, social media is what people think it is, and I would wager that only a small fr

      • My daughter is "Gen Z" and uses YouTube a lot, but NOT as a social media platform but pretty much as a media library / on-demand TV station. She never posted any video (however, I try to make her produce something worthy of upload), never commented, never "liked" and never "followed". Yes, she gets a home page with recommendations based on her past viewing, but you get that even on Netflix.

  • The Right (Score:1, Insightful)

    "It's handy way to visualize that over the last seven years usage has dropped for Facebook, Twitter, and Tumbler â" while usage increased for Instagram and Snapchat."

    So basically what it shows is that since all of Trump's right wing bullshit started (2015) the youth have quit using the platforms he and his ilk have infested.

    • by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Sunday August 14, 2022 @11:18AM (#62788542)

      Thank goodness there aren't any conspiracy theories or "alternative facts" on YouTube!

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • Yeah, but they're easier avoided. They ain't thrown in your face like on Facebook.

        I have an empty FB account that has pretty much zero activity (the main reason for its existence is that I have a fairly unique name and want to make sure that there isn't anyone trying to impersonate me). From time to time I log in to see if it still exists (from a computer I don't use other wise, from an IP address that doesn't belong to me but to my employer who has like a couple thousand other employees).

        And there's quite

    • You give Trump too much credit, it's the age old trend that kid's don't want to hang out the same place their parents are.
    • Tumblr killed itself by blocking porn on the platform. Arguably one of the major uses for the platform in the past. That's all moved over to Twitter now
      • if you follow a few porn accounts, Twitter's machine learning suggests more porn and hot girl accounts to follow. it is amazing !

  • by sombragris ( 246383 ) on Sunday August 14, 2022 @11:24AM (#62788562) Homepage

    The article chart is telling but not the whole picture. The study is limited to the U.S., but keep in mind that for the rest of the world WhatsApp (which appear in the study but with a very low share) is extremeley huge for both adults and teens. Even more, in many parts of the world it's the only Internet many people would ever have, because carriers offer WhatsApp access for free.

    Really, the global reach WhatsApp has been able to achieve is difficult to fathom for a North American, but it's massive.

    • by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

      Study talks about Instagram being popular. Instagram is the other major Meta property. WhatsApp is yet another.

      I.e. internal balance between various platforms owned by company formerly known as Facebook and currently known as Meta may change, but they still dominate social media.

  • Popularity need to drop to below ZERO under all demographics to give it the death it deserves. Twitter to follow, we hope.
    • Popularity need to drop to below ZERO under all demographics to give it the death it deserves. Twitter to follow, we hope.

      Us old people like that it doesn't have kids running around messing it up.

    • I got kicked off twitter because someone pissed me off and I let them know...VERY bluntly.

      So, now I know how many hours I wasted on that open sewer, I am not doing productive things and stepping back from social media and my computer.
  • by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Sunday August 14, 2022 @12:26PM (#62788758)
    They have faced this a couple of times where their user base begins to age out and their solution was to just buy up their competitors. We are still not enforcing antitrust law very much but I don't think they'll get away with buying up a competitor this time. On the other hand the closest equivalent right now is TikTok. And being that they're Chinese and that we're starting up a cold war with China it's possible that app will just get banned or habits ability to monitor users constrained to the point where they can't be profitable in the United States.

    I'm not sure what Facebook is going to do but I know whatever it is it's going to be evil.
    • I've noticed both youtube and Facebook have been pushing "Shorts", quick videos in portrait format like TikToc,maybe they think they're going to divvy up the GenZ sheeple amongst themselves.

    • They think once the metaverse gets rolling, even the youngsters will think it's cool.
    • What competitor would they buy? TikTok? They had their chance, but Oracle was the only one that stepped up with a serious bid, and the CCP wouldn't likely have given Oracle much meaningful control anyway. At least not inside of China.

  • "But the percent of teens using Pew Pew Research is at 96%"

  • They are more antisocial than other generations because they grew up with technology. Makes sense that they wouldn't even want to socialize with people online and just watch everything on YouTube
  • Grandma has been trying to reach you on Facebook, please DM her back.

  • by tbuskey ( 135499 ) on Sunday August 14, 2022 @02:26PM (#62789150) Journal

    I'd use it, but Facebook blocks Linux from posting pictures to Instagram.
    Supposedly you can modify the user agent in your browser & then do some other steps.
    I'm not interested in working that hard to get tracked by Meta.

    • It may be something else, it works fine in chrome.

      That's actually all I use instagram for; posting nature photography pictures (from linux). I didn't do any steps, other that allowing a few scripts until I found the ones needed for functionality.

    • Hmmm I post photos all the time to Instagram on my PC through Firefox and Linux Mint and I have no addons installed.

  • HATE facebook, its just there for family.
    Got kicked off twitter, had not realised how amy hours I wasted on it, best thing that ever happened to me. Thanks Twitter.

    Watching Youtube, but only because I have a new hobby, making toy steam engines, so its a great place to learn.
    Just bought my first lathe, and now saving for the mill.

    Eventually will lead to zero social media... which will mean zero adverts
  • Meta is now mainly WhatsApp. The west is more than happy to block our enemies from Facebook...WhatsApp is a third rail. Meta (via WhatsApp) controls most of the world's telecommunications.
  • by King_TJ ( 85913 ) on Sunday August 14, 2022 @08:23PM (#62790016) Journal

    All of the older people I know would be pleased to hear that the 13-17 year olds are abandoning their social media platform of choice.

    I mean, truthfully? It always seemed to me that most who got on Facebook to begin with were just doing so because their parents or other family members were using it and they didn't want to be left out.

    As for YouTube popularity? I'd say that's in no small part because of all the teens who like the idea of streaming their live gaming sessions or other video podcasts they make and potentially monetizing them.

    You don't hear about anyone getting excited about putting a bunch of "Facebook Live" broadcasts up on their FB page because they're hoping to cash in on it.

  • If I think back to when I was a teen, which is a long time ago now, the very thought of handing out in the same places as my parents was bad enough, but to hang out where my grand parents did? - unthinkable.

    There's a certain age where "elders" stop looking like super heroes and end up looking like douchebags, an age where you want your own secrets, your own world, completely separate.

    I was a teen way before the internet and mobile phones.
    I can still recall the aching boredom, age 15, of having to put up wit

  • YouTube can be a one-way medium, just watching it. Or it can be a two-way medium, where users also post and communicate with others.

    HOW those teens are using YouTube is a key question. It may be that most of them are using it more as a substitute for television than as a substitute for other social media, while they actively participate in Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, or even Facebook. We need more data.

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