YouTube is still the most familiar platform among America’s teens

The latest data from the Pew Research Center confirms YouTube‘s supremacy within the world of teen entertainment. According to the report, 90% of U.S. social media users between the ages of 13 and 17 log onto YouTube with some frequency.

While that number represents YouTube’s long reach among American teens, it actually represents a slight decrease from the previous year, when 93% of Pew’s teenage respondents reported using YouTube in some capacity. But even if other platforms are making a slight cut into YouTube’s market share, the Google-owned hub is still far more ubiquitous than its competitors. For comparison, 63% of Pew respondents said they use TikTok in some capacity.

The latest polling supports a pattern that has emerged across recent surveys of youth social media habits. TikTok will sometimes outrank its competition on specific indices of cultural and political influence, but YouTube still eclipses the ByteDance-owned app when it comes to more general measures. That’s why YouTube remained young adults’ #1 source for literary content even after the explosion of the #BookTok community.

Are there any social media hubs other than TikTok that can challenge YouTube’s industry-leading reach among U.S. teenagers? Pew noted a few risers within its platform rankings. The number of teens making use of Instagram, Snapchat, and Facebook stayed relatively consistent, but WhatsApp enjoyed a year-over-year bump at the expense of X, which saw its market penetration decline.

The report measured Threads for the first time, though Meta’s X-style feed is still struggling to gain traction. Only 6% of teenagers said they spend any time there.

When you zoom all the way out, Pew’s rankings show broad, decade-long declines for Facebook and X, which have slowly lost much of their influence among America’s teens. YouTube’s saturation has now decreased for two consecutive years; is that the precursor to a prolonged decline, or just a blip on the radar at one of the world’s most consistent tech companies? We’ll have to wait until the 2025 report to find out.