Real or virtual? Teenagers’ lives are increasingly online
YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat and Facebook – teens are spending more and more time online. Here is the data that emerges from a Pew Research Center survey on teen habits
Real and virtual lives mixed. Since 2014, US teenagers who are “almost constantly” online have doubled. This is stated in a recent survey by the Pew Research Center.
THE NUMBERS OF THE SURVEY
The data collected shows not only that compared to previous research carried out between 2014 and 2015, the number of daily internet users among adolescents has increased from 92% to 97%, but also that about half of US teenagers (46%) between the ages of 13 and 17, he said he was online "almost constantly". An almost double percentage compared to 24% in 2014-2015.
YOUTUBE DOMINATES
However, YouTube is dominating the ranking of the most used platforms, before social media. Although the years pass – it was created in 2005 – it is still used by 95% of teenagers.
THE SUCCESS OF TIKTOK
This is followed immediately by Bytedance 's Chinese social network, TikTok, which has experienced a real surge in popularity since its debut in North America.
According to the survey, about 67% of teens say they use TikTok “always”, while 16% say they use it “almost constantly”.
INSTAGRAM AND SNAPCHAT
Instagram, which is experiencing a period of crisis precisely because of its competitor TikTok, like Snapchat is used by about 6 out of 10 teenagers.
THE COLLAPSE OF FACEBOOK
For young people, Facebook is now "for old" and the numbers confirm this. If in 2014-2015 it was used by 71% of teenagers, now the percentage has dropped to 32%.
Then follow smaller shares using Twitter, Twitch, WhatsApp, Reddit and Tumblr.
TIME OF USE
The study also looks at the amount of time teens spend online. The majority (55%) say they spend "about the right amount of time" on these applications and sites, while for more or less a third of teenagers (36%) it is "too much time". Only 8% of teenagers believe they spend "too little time" on these platforms.
OTHER DATA
In addition to the rise of TikTok and the fall of Facebook, other types of data also emerge from the survey. For example, male teens are more likely than female peers to report using YouTube, Twitch, and Reddit, while girls seem to prefer TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat.
Not only. Black and Hispanic teens are much more likely to report that they are always online than white teens.
HOW MUCH EMPLOYEES ARE
When asked about the idea of abandoning social media, 54% of teenagers say it would be "at least partly difficult" to give it up, while for 46% it would be "at least partly easy".
It would be more difficult especially for girls (58% versus 49%), in fact, for a quarter of boys it would be “very easy”, while 15% say the same for girls.
Older teens also say they would have a hard time giving up social media: around 6 in 10 teenagers aged 15 to 17 (58%) say giving up would be "at least partly difficult", while a smaller percentage of 13 and 14 years (48%) think it "would be difficult".
CONSEQUENCES (NEGATIVE) AND REMEDIES
If the internet has been the means – for many but not all – to continue with education and extracurricular activities during the pandemic, being always online also means that real-world problems, such as bullying, harassment and abuse, can pose a greater risk to adolescents.
Reason why parents and regulators have lobbied tech companies to introduce security policies and tools such as parental controls that can block access to certain activities and also set computer usage time, tv, smartphone and tablet.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/innovazione/reale-o-virtuale-la-vita-degli-adolescenti-e-sempre-piu-online/ on Sat, 20 Aug 2022 06:14:29 +0000.