Recap: With well over two billion active users, Facebook is more popular than ever but its demographic is growing older. Younger social media users are increasingly migrating to alternative platforms... and coming online in droves.
Facebook's grip on America's youth is weakening. According to a new Pew Research Center survey, the world's largest social network is no longer the most popular online platform for teens.
New figures from Pew's latest survey show that YouTube, Instagram and Snapchat - in that order - are the most popular online platforms among US teens ages 13 to 17. Of those polled, 85 percent said they use YouTube, 72 percent use Instagram and 69 percent are on Snapchat.
Only 51 percent of respondents claim to utilize Facebook and for Twitter, usage is far lower at just 32 percent.
Another statistic that leaps off the page is the near ubiquitous use of smartphones among teens. According to Pew, 95 percent of teens own a smartphone or have access to one. Unsurprisingly, this is resulting in way more time spent online as 45 percent of those polled said they are online on a near-constant basis.
As for the impact of social media on the lives of young people, there doesn't seem to be a clear consensus either way (at least, among the kids themselves). 45 percent of teens surveyed said the effect has been neither positive nor negative, 31 percent said the effect has been mostly positive and 24 percent said it has been mostly negative.
This statistic should be taken with a grain of salt as you're essentially asking teens to weigh the impact of something that's the norm for them. Today's teens don't know what it's like to grow up in a world without social media and the Internet; to ask about the impact of something that's always been around seems a bit unfair.