US teens prefer YouTube, Snapchat over Facebook: Survey

Facebook came fourth among apps used by US teens which included YouTube, Instagram and Snapchat in the list.

The survey reveals that roughly half of US teenagers between ages 13 and 17 use Facebook. (AP)

YouTube, Instagram and Snapchat are the most popular online platforms among US teenagers today, pushing Facebook, which once dominated the social media landscape, to the fourth position, according to a new survey.

Today, roughly half (51%) of US teenagers between ages 13 and 17 say they use Facebook, notably lower than the shares who use YouTube, Facebook-owned Instagram or Snapchat, showed the Pew Research Center survey results released on Thursday.

While 85% teenagers use YouTube, 72% use Instagram and 69% use Snapchat, showed the survey conducted between March 7-April 10 this year.

Notably, lower-income teenagers are more likely to gravitate toward Facebook than those from higher-income households.

Seven-in-ten teenagers living in households earning less than $30,000 a year say they use Facebook, compared with 36% whose annual family income is $75,000 or more, the results showed.

Interestingly, girls were more likely than boys to say Snapchat is the site they use most often, while boys were more inclined than girls to identify YouTube as their go-to platform.

This shift in social media use of teenagers is just one example of how the technology landscape for young people has evolved since the Pew Research Center's last survey of teenagers and technology use in 2014-2015.

Most notably, smartphone ownership has become a nearly ubiquitous element of teenage life .

Fully 95% of teenagers in the US have today access to a smartphone, and 45% say they are online "almost constantly", the results showed.

The shares of teenagers who use Twitter and Tumblr are largely comparable to the shares who did so in the 2014-2015 survey. The survey also found there is no clear consensus among teenagers about the effect that social media has on the lives of young people today.

Minorities of teenagers describe that effect as mostly positive (31%) or mostly negative (24%), but the largest share (45%) says that effect has been neither positive nor negative, the survey showed.

It also revealed that while a majority of both boys and girls play video games, gaming is nearly universal for boys.

Overall, 84% of teenagers say they have or have access to a game console at home, and 90% say they play video games of any kind - whether on a computer, game console or cellphone. While a substantial majority of girls report having access to a game console at home (75%) or playing video games in general (83%), those shares are even higher among boys.

Roughly nine-in-ten boys (92%) have or have access to a game console at home, and 97% say they play video games in some form or fashion, the results showed.