The latest study conducted by Pew Research Center, “Teens, Social Media & Technology Overview 2015,” reveals that though Facebook continues to the undisputed king of networking sites, Instagram is not too far behind either. 71% of the teens use Facebook and 41% of them say they use it more when compared to other sites. More than half o f them use Instagram as well. Incidentally, that too is owned by Facebook.
The study highlighted that a huge upsurge in smart phone usage had led to an increase in the popularity of social sites among teenagers- since they are now able to access them from wherever they are, without having to sit behind a bulky desktop or a much heavier laptop. Nearly three quarters of the teens, found the survey, had smartphone access and 24% of them admitted to performing online activities on a regular basis.
Other popular social media sites among teenagers are Snapchat (41 percent), Twitter and Google Plus (tied at 33 percent, Vine (24 percent) and Tumblr (14 percent).
Boys and girls were also found to have distinctly different tastes when it came to networking sites. While boys were seen to prefer playing video games, girls found visually oriented sites like Instagram, Snapchat and other pinning sites Tumblr and Pinterest more interesting.
Apart from the gender divide, the report also saw a social media disparity between people belonging to different income groups. While Facebook was found to have universal appeal and popular with people from all income levels, teens from wealthier families use Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter more than their counterparts from low-income families.
“It should be noted that some of these differences may be artifacts of differences in use of these sites by these different subgroups of teens,” Pew reported. For example, Instagram and Snapchat are image-based apps that often highlight lavish purchases, vacations and activities that low-income families may not be exposed to.
Snapchat, in particular, was seen to be more popular with wealthier kids. Kids from families with a household income of $100,000 or more used Snapchat twice as much as those from a family with a household income of less than $30,000.
Pew, a non profit research group, came to these conclusions after comparing data from a “nationally representative” sample of more than 1,060 teens.
