Instagram remains the most-used social app among teens, even though TikTok is more popular as a source of entertainment.

That's according to the latest research from Piper Sandler, which surveys teen trends of note and how they're changing over time.

According to an annual survey of more than 13,000 U.S. teens, Piper Sandler found out that Netflix comes a hair's breadth ahead of YouTube when it comes to daily video consumption, and TikTok handed over IG as the most liked social app.
However, if it comes to usage, Instagram is the number one, gaining some 7 percentage points since the last survey. TikTok came in second at +5% followed by Snapchat with -3%.

Which is no surprise. Younger users have always flocked to those apps, though as you can see, Snap has slipped some ground in the latest Piper Sandler survey.

Other social platforms: Pinterest is more interesting these days than it's been in the past (+6%), Facebook itself rebounded a little bit too (+2%), and the old Twitter, now just Twitter again, declined in usage with teens (-2%).

And the fact that Instagram stays popular, which perhaps has to do with the social graph of its users and established networks within the app but also pushes Meta toward a shift into more AI-recommended content, though not everyone's cup of tea, increases time spent within the app. Indeed, just last week, Meta reported there are now 40 million young adults using Facebook across the US and Canada every day, the highest in more than three years.

This should not significantly change the strategy playbook, as probably you wanted to access these channels if you wanted to reach young users. On the other hand, possibly Pinterest is worth a peek, and with these enhancements on AI ads of Facebook, it might just be a more solid route to younger demographics than you are being led to believe.

Still, the fact is, through IG and TikTok, Snap is actually leading the charge, at least for this generation.