Pew Research Center: Teens, Social Media, and Technology 2023 Survey Report

YouTube remains the most widely used social media platform among U.S. teens, with the ever-popular TikTok a close second, tied with Snapchat and Instagram.

93% of teenagers use YouTube. Aside from WhatsApp and BeReal, YouTube is the only platform where there is no significant age gap in usage.

Girls (68%) are more likely to use TikTok than boys (59%). African American teens (80%) and Hispanic teens (70%) use it more often than white teens (57%). Urban teens (67%) use it slightly more often than suburban or rural teens (62%). TikTok is used more often by low-income respondents (71%) than by high-income respondents (61%).

Girls (65%) are more likely to use Snapchat than boys (56%), but usage is not as divided as it is for TikTok when sorted by race/ethnicity, geography or household income. Older teens (67%) are more likely to use it than younger teens (49%).

Instagram use (59%) follows the same pattern as TikTok: more use among girls (66%) than boys (53%), more use among African American (69%) and Hispanic (62%) than white (56%) teens, and more use among urban (65%) than suburban (58%) or rural (55%) teens.

Facebook is used slightly more by girls (36%) than boys (29%), but there are few differences in usage by race or ethnicity. It is used less often than expected by suburban (28%) and high-income ($75,000+) teens (27%).

Boys and girls are both using WhatsApp (21%), but Hispanic teens (28%) are more likely to use it than African American teens (20%) and white teens (14%).

There was little difference in Twitter /X (20%) between boys (21%) and girls (19%), but the proportion was higher among African American teenagers (28%) than other teenagers.

Reddit (14%) was one of the few platforms that was more appealing to boys (18%) than girls (10%). There were small differences by race/ethnicity and no differences in household income, but it was less popular in rural settings (10%).

Girls (19%) use Bereal more extensively than boys (8%). While there are no differences in usage among teens of different ages, it is one of the few platforms where urban teens (7%) lag behind suburban teens (15%) and rural teens (14%) to a large extent.