According to a study the US teenagers are ditching Facebook over platforms such as YouTube, Instagram and Snapchat.
According to the data collected by the US-based Pew Research Center, only 51% use Facebook, which is a 20% drop since 2015, when the center last surveyed teens’ social media habits.
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Most of those aged between 13 to 17, own or have access to a smartphone, with about 45% online on a near-constant basis.
YouTube has snatched Facebook’s dominance over teens, with 85% of them preferring the video-sharing platform over Facebook.
Second and third top social media services among teens are now Instagram at 72% and Snapchat at 69%.
The numbers of teens who use Twitter (32%) and Tumblr (14%) are more or less unchanged as compared to the results obtained in 2015.
While Facebook may have lost its dominance over the teenage population to Google-owned YouTube, but it has owned the rising favourite Instagram, a photo and video-sharing networking service, since 2012.
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The Pew study, which surveyed nearly 750 teens in one month earlier this year, found that the increase in smartphone ownership played a huge part in teen life. Today’s 95% is a 22-point increase from the 73% of teens three years ago.
While most teens used the same social media platforms as their peers, low-income teens were more likely to prefer Facebook than teens from a higher-income household.
When asked about the effects of Social media on their lives, almost a third described the effect as mostly positive, and a quarter saying mostly negative. The largest bloc, 45%, said that the effect was neither positive nor negative.