A new index shows how U.S. teenagers use technology and communicate with their peers.
“Kids these days, all they do is text”… Although this quote is not completely true, U.S. teens are reshaping the forms of communication.
Back in 2012, Common Sense Media, a non-profit specializing in kids’ technology and media use, conducted a survey asking U.S. teens about their favorite way to communicate with friends. Results showed teens preferred communication “in person”, but six years later, communication seems to have lost its “face”.
The new report from Common Sense Media shows texting is now the favorite form of communication among teenagers in the United States with 35% of preference (33% in 2012), while in-person communication reached a 32% penetration (49% in 2012).
Social media came third in preferred form of communication with a 16% reach (7% in 2012).
Social media use and preference
Snapchat is like the high school kids with lots of problems, but with tons of popularity.
Although its stock recovered after hitting an all-time low in mid-May of 2018, a much-vaunted redesign of the social media app has failed to boost stagnant user growth and investors are worried.
According to the latest edition of PiperJaffray’s bi-annual “Taking Stock With Teens” survey, 46% of the 8,600 teenagers polled named Snapchat their favorite social media platform, while 32% of the respondents picked Instagram as their platform of choice.
Back in 2013, Facebook was the preferred social network of U.S. teens, in 2014, Instagram took over for a while, but it was replaced by Snapchat in 2016, who has dominated the scene up to the fall of 2018, despite Instagram surpassed Snapchat for the first time in terms of usage, with 85% of U.S. teenagers using it at least once a month compared to 84% for Snapchat.
Common Sense Media also confirmed social media usage among teenagers has drastically increased between 2012 and 2018.
A survey conducted in the U.S. earlier this year showed that 70% of teenagers (13-17) check social media several times a day, up from just 34% in 2012.
35% of the 1,000+ 13- to 17-year-olds surveyed in 2018 stated that texting was their favorite way of communicating with friends. Back in 2012, preference reached 33%.
32% of respondents still prefer in-person contact over virtual communication. In 2012, 49% preferred in-person communication, showing a steady drop in the percentage of teens choosing personal interaction with their friends over electronic ways of communicating. Many parents view this trend anxiously.
Social media grew as a form of communication among U.S. teenagers. It marked a 16% of preference compared to 7% in 2012. Social media includes Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat.
Video-chatting is also growing as a form of communication among U.S. teens, as just Facebook logged a total of 17 billion video calls in 2017, double from what they had gathered one year prior. Whatsapp announced 1.2 billion users are spending more than 340 million minutes a day making more than 55 million video calls.
Phone calls have shown little-to-no progress regarding 2012 and 2018. In 2012, talking on the phone reached a 4% preference among teenagers of the United States. In 2012, preference grew just 1%, however, the market promises growth. According to MarketingProfs, in 2016, global click-to-call revenue was estimated at $7.41 billion, and that figure is expected to grow to $13.70 by 2020.
