Back
Teens, Social Media and Technology 2022 (Pew Research Center)
webCredibility Rating
4/5
High(4)High quality. Established institution or organization with editorial oversight and accountability.
Rating inherited from publication venue: Pew Research Center
Useful empirical baseline for discussions on AI-driven recommendation systems, persuasive technology, and the real-world impact of algorithmic manipulation on vulnerable populations like teenagers.
Metadata
Importance: 35/100organizational reportreference
Summary
This Pew Research Center survey examines how American teenagers use social media and technology platforms in 2022, highlighting shifts in platform popularity, usage frequency, and teen attitudes toward social media's impact on their lives. It provides empirical data on how platforms like TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram dominate teen attention, raising concerns about autonomy and manipulation by algorithmic systems.
Key Points
- •YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat are the dominant platforms among U.S. teens, with YouTube used by 95% of respondents.
- •TikTok saw dramatic growth since 2015, now used by 67% of teens, reflecting algorithmic content platforms' rising influence over younger users.
- •A majority of teens report using social media 'almost constantly,' raising concerns about addictive design and erosion of user autonomy.
- •Teens express mixed feelings about social media: many acknowledge negative effects on mental health while still feeling unable to disengage.
- •The data underscores how platform design choices and recommendation algorithms shape behavior at scale, relevant to AI deployment ethics.
Cited by 1 page
| Page | Type | Quality |
|---|---|---|
| Erosion of Human Agency | Risk | 91.0 |
Cached Content Preview
HTTP 200Fetched Apr 9, 202622 KB
Teens, Social Media and Technology 2022 | Pew Research Center
Search
Read Our Research On:
Report
|
August 10, 2022
Teens, Social Media and Technology 2022
TikTok has established itself as one of the top online platforms for U.S. teens, while the share of teens who use Facebook has fallen sharply
X
Facebook
Threads
LinkedIn
WhatsApp
Mail
Add Us On Google
By Emily A. Vogels , Risa Gelles-Watnick and Navid Massarat
Table of Contents
Teens, Social Media and Technology 2022
Acknowledgments
Methodology
(Maskot/Getty Images)
How we did this
Pew Research Center conducted this study to better understand teens’ use of digital devices, social media and other online platforms. For this analysis, we surveyed 1,316 U.S. teens. The survey was conducted online by Ipsos from April 14 to May 4, 2022.
This research was reviewed and approved by an external institutional review board (IRB), Advarra, which is an independent committee of experts that specializes in helping to protect the rights of research participants.
Ipsos recruited the teens via their parents who were a part of its KnowledgePanel , a probability-based web panel recruited primarily through national, random sampling of residential addresses. The survey is weighted to be representative of U.S. teens ages 13 to 17 who live with parents by age, gender, race, ethnicity, household income and other categories.
The trend data in this report comes from a Center survey on the same topic conducted from Sept. 25, 2014, to Oct. 9, 2014, and from Feb. 10, 2015, to March 16, 2015. The survey was fielded by the GfK Group on its KnowledgePanel, which was later acquired by Ipsos .
Here are the questions used for this report , along with responses, and its methodology .
For the latest survey data on social media and tech use among teens, see “ Teens, Social Media and AI Chatbots 2025 .”
The landscape of social media is ever-changing, especially among teens who often are on the leading edge of this space. A new Pew Research Center survey of American teenagers ages 13 to 17 finds TikTok has rocketed in popularity since its North American debut several years ago and now is a top social media platform for teens among the platforms covered in this survey. Some 67% of teens say they ever use TikTok, with 16% of all teens saying they use it almost constantly. Meanwhile, the share of teens who say they use Facebook, a dominant social media platform among teens in the Center’s 2014-15 survey , has plummeted from 71% then to 32% today.
YouTube tops the 2022 teen onlin
... (truncated, 22 KB total)Resource ID:
c5a86e6a14080e31 | Stable ID: sid_S3k1iaU0h8