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More Than 15% of Teens Say They're On YouTube or TikTok 'Almost Constantly' (cnbc.com) 70

Posted by BeauHD from the glued-to-their-screens dept.
Nearly 1 in 5 teenagers in the U.S. say they use YouTube and TikTok "almost constantly," according to a Pew Research Center survey. CNBC reports: The survey showed that YouTube was the most "widely used platform" for U.S.-based teenagers, with 93% of survey respondents saying they regularly use Google's video-streaming service. Of that 93% figure, about 16% of the teenage respondents said they "almost constantly visit or use" YouTube, underscoring the video app's immense popularity with the youth market. TikTok was the second-most popular app, with 63% of teens saying they use the ByteDance-owned short-video service, followed by Snapchat and Meta's Instagram, which had 60% and 59%, respectively. About 17% of the 63% of respondents who said they use TikTok indicated they access the short-video service "almost constantly," the report noted.

Meanwhile, Facebook and Twitter, now known as X, are not as popular with U.S.-based teenagers as they were a decade ago, the Pew Research study detailed. Regarding Facebook in particular, the Pew Research authors wrote that the share of teens who use the Meta-owned social media app "has dropped from 71% in 2014-2015 to 33% today." During the same period, Meta-owned Instagram's usage has not made up the difference in share, increasing from 52% in 2014-15 to a peak of 62% last year, then dropping to 59% in 2023, according to the firm.
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More Than 15% of Teens Say They're On YouTube or TikTok 'Almost Constantly' More

More Than 15% of Teens Say They're On YouTube or TikTok 'Almost Constantly'

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  • I'll say I did this with science fiction books back in the day and probably would have done it with YouTube if it was around back then. Especially since I didn't have access to nearly as much science fiction as I would have wanted.

    They're trying to escape reality because reality is really really bad for them. As a nerd I can relate. Remember reading a quote from the writer Gore Vidal where he talked about losing interest in fiction because the real world was more interesting to him. But at the same time

    • Re:Before the old grumps chime in (Score:5, Interesting)

      by iAmWaySmarterThanYou ( 10095012 ) on Tuesday December 12, 2023 @11:37AM (#64076087)

      The problem isn't that kids are focused on a "thing". It is that when they don't have that thing they are lost.

      Take away the phone/ipad/computer/internet from most of those kids for any length of time and they lose their shit and get fidgety like a drug addict who needs their fix. I've seen it. Currently in long term detox process in my home and seen her friends behave the same and hear it from many other parents.

      Reality is not bad for these kids. They're top 10%ers in this country which makes them top 1%er for the planet. They're loved, taken care of, get good grades, aren't on drugs, pregnant, getting beaten or raped or anything else that happens in shitty places to kids. They do not need an escape from reality. They need an escape _to_ reality from the false world they're getting on the net.

      • Re:Before the old grumps chime in (Score:5, Insightful)

        by conorjh ( 6311812 ) on Tuesday December 12, 2023 @11:43AM (#64076105)

        Currently in long term detox process in my home

        imagine your old man telling you to youre spending too much time on the internet whilst hes posts 20-30 times a day on slashdot

      • I would imagine they will be just fine. My childhood was pre-internet. I gamed, but not too much, except a few binge sessions. I had a friend that played games much more than I did, yet he did okay. I'm glad you've been able to keep them off it to some degree, that sounds healthy, but I think, long term, they will adjust. Nice to get an earlier, healthier start though. My issue was too much sugar as a kid. I've made progress, and probably fairly healthy in that respect now, but not where I would like to b

      • The problem isn't that kids are focused on a "thing". It is that when they don't have that thing they are lost.

        If I swapped out all your light bulbs for kerosene lamps you'd probably be pretty pissed, too. YouTube is just the modern version of television, and small handheld TVs were a thing even when I was a kid. [wikipedia.org]

        • When I was a kid we all watched plenty of tv. But only when there was nothing else to do. We didn't watch tv in preference to all other options. We didn't fidget and fuss and have no idea what to do with ourselves if the tv was off.

          Ymmv.

          • That's mostly because you'd only be able to watch so much TV before there'd be nothing worth watching at the time on any of the channels. Course, my generation had a fix for that too: the VCR.

        • The problem isn't that kids are focused on a "thing". It is that when they don't have that thing they are lost.

          If I swapped out all your light bulbs for kerosene lamps you'd probably be pretty pissed, too. YouTube is just the modern version of television, and small handheld TVs were a thing even when I was a kid. [wikipedia.org]

          I remember when the only thing we had was Woodburning Televisions.

      • they're escaping from the world we put them in. Same as we did when we were kids.

        And you can cool it with the "Starving Kids in China" bullshit. Just because somebody has it worse than me when I was a kid didn't mean the bullies left me alone, didn't make the autism symptoms go away and didn't make my mom stop drinking.

        And if their doing so fucking great why the hell do you care if they spend a lot of time on YouTube? You're working backwards from your conclusion because you're an old fart angry at
        • Comment removed based on user account deletion
          • Empathy fatigue means you keep your mouth shut because you're too tired from worrying about too many different things to worry about anything else. The older generation goes out of its way to shit on the younger generation. Especially when they see the younger generation struggling.

            It's especially bad with the current old farts because we know damn well we left the worst planet than what we were given and we did so for the stupidest fucking reasons imaginable. And the last thing we want to do in our Twil
        • in support of your argument I offer Steve Jobs discussion on how Death is the best invention Life has created. Ref: https://www.huffpost.com/entry... [huffpost.com]

          I know the kids today have a very different world than the one I grew up in, "better?", "worse?", I don't know, I do know it is different and as a famous philosopher once said, the thinking that got you into this mess, is not the same thinking that will get you out of it (I paraphrase).

          looking at what kids are doing today, (mostly) helping each other, bein

          • That's the age group where practically anything you tell a kid they not only believe but it gets stuck in there head and becomes difficult if not impossible to get out. Religious extremists use that knowledge to create more religious extremists out of children. It creates all sorts of mental and emotional problems when those kids get old enough to face the world as it is versus how they were told the world is.

            So you end up in a situation where in order for our species to progress the previous generation
            • one of my favorite courses I took back in the 70's was one on criticism... not literary criticism, though we did a lot of that, but criticism in general. I read an article in the New England Journal of Medicine wherein a doctor used faulty statistics to support his hypothesis, took him right to pieces. Got an A in the class. I imagine with the 'common core' and all, that there isn't time to teach that stuff anymore, the teachers instead teach to the test so their students can pass, which of course damages t

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by jbengt ( 874751 )

          they're escaping from the world we put them in. Same as we did when we were kids.

          When I was a kid, the closest I came to escaping from the world I was put in was reading a book. I watched very little television, there was no internet, and I spent a lot of my free time outside with friends Nowadays, I spend way too much time watching TV and reading posts like yours on the internet. So I don't think things are actually the same.

          • You spent a lot of time with friends. You said so yourself. That is not escaping The real world. You're mistaking having a day job or having to spend time studying for the real world. This is pretty common because as a culture we teach people to think of themselves only in terms of their job and nothing else. Basically your entire value is a human being is determined by how much shareholder value you can produce.

            The kids who are escaping the real world are escaping it entirely. It's not just a matter of

      • Take away the phone/ipad/computer/internet from most of those kids for any length of time and they lose their shit and get fidgety like a drug addict who needs their fix. I've seen it. Currently in long term detox process in my home and seen her friends behave the same and hear it from many other parents.

        Yup. My recently turned 17 niece doesn't just want, but *needs* her phone -- apparently so she can constantly skip through very partial viewings of YouTube and TikTok videos, and songs.

    • Gore Vidal? (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      What death metal band was he in?

    • They're trying to escape reality because reality is really really bad for them.

      Reality check. Life is better now than it has ever been in the history of humankind.

      The worst thing about life now is people like you complaining about how bad life is so that your masters can promise to MAGA if we just give them MOAR POWAR...

  • At least according to a fact I just made up... People are on their phone a lot

  • YouTube is basically the equivalent of TV now, except you get to watch what interests you rather than what's spoon fed to you by a team of programmers. I watch quite a bit of it myself and I'm 50!

    Shows on how to repair retro computers, how to build a deck / fence / small shed in the backyard, how to safely use a resin 3d printer, battle reports of the games that use the minis I just 3d printed, watching a city planner play Cities Skylines and learning why cities are built the way they are, etc... There's a tonne of interesting content on there these days, commercials are short(ish) and often skipable after 10-15 seconds.

    All this is just the same "moral panic" parents had when I was a kid about kids watching too much TV, or them new fangled BBSes, or playing D&D, or listening to KISS albums backwards so you can get the secret messages from Satan. My only concern is that some parents aren't going to be as good at media literacy as others, if their kids aren't being properly monitored they're gonna start watching some pretty sketchy shit that'll teach them that reality isn't real or go down the "manosphere" incel crackpot conspiracy nutter rabbit hole.

    • No, kids need to be given BB guns so they can go outside and shoot squirrels for entertainment. Won't someone think of the overpopulation of tree-dwelling rodents? /s

      • Also the budding psychopaths. How's a kid supposed to get a taste for murder if we don't encourage animal cruelty?

    • YouTube is basically the equivalent of TV now, except you get to watch what interests you rather than what's spoon fed to you by a team of programmers. I watch quite a bit of it myself and I'm 50!

      Shows on how to repair retro computers, how to build a deck / fence / small shed in the backyard, how to safely use a resin 3d printer, battle reports of the games that use the minis I just 3d printed, watching a city planner play Cities Skylines and learning why cities are built the way they are, etc... There's a tonne of interesting content on there these days, commercials are short(ish) and often skipable after 10-15 seconds.

      All this is just the same "moral panic" parents had when I was a kid about kids watching too much TV, or them new fangled BBSes, or playing D&D, or listening to KISS albums backwards so you can get the secret messages from Satan.

      I disagree. Your use of the Internet is that of a mind born in the 1900s, shaped by things like experiential learning, unavoidable downtime, machines and electronics that didn't work well and were entirely user-fixable with the tools in your dad's shed, systems that did not adapt or anticipate to you whatsoever, etc.

      Your brain spent the formative first 30 years of its existence being forced to synthesize and internalize knowledge. So yes, to you 10 hours of daily Internet usage seems fine -- you're using it

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Other surveys have shown that 1% of teenagers have used the drug zetacyllin .... however it doesn't exist ...

  • Down the highway. In the fast last lane. Swerving. And going slow.

    Then I pass them and look over through the window and there they are. Having fun on cellphone driving down the highway.

  • My mother in her 70s watches 4-5 hours of it. I just have to tell her about information hygiene.
    Almost everyone watches it. The point is watching what? The recommendation algorithms are not healthy for us, and there is a lot of junk, but you can get almost an entire education off it.

  • Addicted (Score:3)

    by mendax ( 114116 ) on Tuesday December 12, 2023 @02:23PM (#64076533)

    I thought I was a television addict when I was a teenager. With my addictive personality, if I were a teenager today I would be doomed. I'd go through withdrawal pains every time I put the phone down. Word of warning: never give a teenager a smart phone! So they'll be unpopular because all their friends have the smart phones. It might keep them from getting pregnant, fathering children, or catching STD's. Also, feed them lots of food so they get fat and no one wants to have sex with them. Well, maybe that logic wouldn't work with girls because from my experience it was the fat girls who were "easy."

  • How did they have time to participate in the survey then?

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