Can you believe it’s been almost 4 years since our original blog on teens using social media! 😨How times have changed.

We asked a real life teenager how they use social in their personal and school life, the results are surprising! Below, we break down the verdict on the platforms of our 2016 blog, platform by platform.

Facebook 👎

After the infamous Facebook scandal regarding the privacy of its users’ information, Facebook’s user base has dramatically declined. The platform has become far less relevant for teens as the years have gone by, mainly because the population of older adults and embarrassing family members has increased as they’ve discovered social media and tried to become ‘hip’ and trendy. For this reason, in 2020 teens tend to avoid it, and in some cases scorn the older population using it, with jokes being made about ‘Facebook mums’ and their love of cringey minion memes. Many teens have either deleted or abandoned their accounts and prefer other platforms, usually where anonymity is found and a younger audience is prevalent.

YouTube 👍

The concept of vloggers and influencers has remained, and in some cases grown. Being a YouTuber has become even more prominent as a career path and is a job many teens might aspire to do out of admiration for the fame and glamour it seems to hold. In recent years, YouTube has been updated to include features such as stories, the ability to post images and text, premieres for videos to induce hype, YouTube live streaming and even the option to purchase premium and be able to access many additional features. YouTube in terms of video entertainment is definitely in conflict with Netflix which has become a staple in most teen’s lives, however for me the beauty of YouTube is the variety of content, from informative videos and tutorials to TV clips and sometimes full episodes you can watch for free - something you don’t get with Netflix.

Twitter 👍

Twitter has still not been crowned the most popular social media site, but has become more politically charged. Politicians now Tweet regularly to share their viewpoints and gain broader support, and controversial personalities share their perspectives on things, often causing uproar. Twitter is a brilliant platform for teens to access these political debates and understand politics in a way more geared towards them. Notably, Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg is someone who speaks to her fellow teens on a similar level and has come into conflict with other Twitter users in recent years due to opposing views on climate change. The site is brilliant for teens interested in becoming politically informed and watching debates unfold.

Twitter also has content relevant to teen life outside of politics, especially its place in the world as the origin of meme formats. Exam tweets and memes following GCSE, AS and A-Level papers are incredibly popular, especially due to the support of hashtags by the site. After my GCSE exams, the first thing I’d do was get home and laugh at the tweets and memes people were uploading every few seconds which were relevant to the paper I had sat. It offers a way for teenagers all over the country to connect. I, for one, felt much better about my biology exam after someone admitted in a tweet to writing about children photosynthesising in their paper.

Instagram 👍

Instagram is the new Facebook. It’s the equivalent of Facebook for the new generation of teenagers who have watched Facebook being taken over by their older relatives. Many of these relatives, however, have not yet cottoned on to Instagram or don’t know how to work it, and for this reason many teens come here to hide and have some anonymity. The brilliant thing about Instagram is its ability to facilitate so many types of profile, from personal pages, anonymous ‘finsta’ accounts, business accounts and more. Teens often come here as it is geared towards following celebrities and pages such as meme pages. Something I personally use Instagram for is following good news pages - an alternative to conventional news pages which only posts happy news stories. As mentioned with YouTube, the notion of the influencer is a growing one and unfortunately these ‘influencer lifestyles’ often don’t turn out to be all they seem - not only harming teens on the site but also the silently suffering influencers themselves.

Google+ (Sadly no longer with us!) 👎

I’ll be completely honest: I have no idea what Google+ even was. Us teens use the search engine daily and regularly make use of other Google services like YouTube, but Google+? Nope.

Pinterest 👎

Pinterest is a platform very useful for art students, people doing projects, looking for inspiration for decorating their rooms or people who are creatively inclined and enjoy making mood boards, but the site is not very useful as your traditional social media platform. It is not information-based as such as the sharing of text is not supported through posting of any form. For this reason, Pinterest is not very versatile and does not appeal to teenagers in general.

Snapchat 👍

Snapchat is still incredibly broadly used by teenagers in 2020. Personally, I don’t use it much, but I know that for many of my classmates and friends it is the platform they use the most. They all share stories, send pictures and messages to each other. The only thing I use it for, however, is group chats for my A-Level subjects. We have one for each subject, often with a funny title (‘Philosophy Failures’, anyone?) and the great thing about Snapchat that isn’t true for Instagram, is that you can change how you see someone’s screen name to make it whatever you want it to be, which when combined with the Bitmojis which look like your classmates make it very easy to tell who is saying what. When everyone has ambiguous handles and random profile pictures not of them on Instagram, the same is not true.

LinkedIn 🤔

In 2020 teens are being actively encouraged at school by career leaders to make a LinkedIn profile to further their future career prospects. LinkedIn is great for teens to begin reaching out and making connections, however no teen that I know of actively uses LinkedIn on a day-to-day basis due to its professional sphere. Many older teens in sixth form or college often have a LinkedIn profile to begin preparing for careers once they leave education. Younger teens aren’t yet focusing on career options and haven’t yet got qualifications to share on their profiles and so are rarely found on the site.

Tumblr 👍

The same still stands now as it did in 2016 with Tumblr: it is a site mainly used by teens as part of fanbases. The vast majority of profiles on Tumblr are anonymous and the platform is generally used for chatting with strangers and sharing fandom content, rather than keeping up with friends (and DEFINITELY not family). Tumblr caters for a more niche audience due to its connotations to all things nerdy, and generally attracts geeky teens. Popular and particularly funny posts from Tumblr often end up being shared over and over again by different Instagram accounts, and therefore an account is not needed to enjoy the content.

Vine ☹️

RIP Vine. Vine is a platform that was closed down just a few months after the original blog on teens and social media. Popular vines can still be found on YouTube, often shared in humorous compilations. TikTok is a new app that has come out as the new version of Musical.ly, and for some it helps to fill the tragic gap Vine has left. However, not everyone agrees with it as a valid replacement for the iconic app and instead see TikTok as cringey due to the younger teens who attempt to make funny videos on it.

Flickr 👎

I’ve heard of Flickr maybe 3 times in my life. All I know is that it’s something to do with pictures. Bottom line: teens do not use Flickr.

Periscope 👎

I had no idea this was a thing. What is this? Have any other teens heard of this? I don’t think any young people use Periscope.

Personal Verdict

Overall, I admit that I find myself drawn to using Instagram more than other social media platforms. I know that many of my peers use Snapchat the most, but I find it too temporary with the disappearing photos and messages. If I forget to save a message, someone replies, and I open their message and see “Yes, that’s fine”, I have no recollection of what I asked and it’s frustrating for all involved. In my opinion the popularity of both Instagram and Snapchat is down to their focus on sharing visual elements such as photos and videos. The concept of stories which appear on both of these apps are very appealing to the majority of young audiences due to their simplicity and short 24 hour life (leaving no lasting mark or room for regret!) along with the integrated photo sharing and messaging aspects. They are good all-rounders as platforms and cover all aspects of what teenagers want in a social media site.

The less popular social media are used less due to their ingrained flaws which cause teenagers to disengage: Facebook has become increasingly unappealing to the younger generation with the community of older users growing and Tumblr is focused on a narrow group of individuals. I never found either of these platforms hugely entincing for these reasons. As for YouTube, my friends and I often use it both for leisure time and for finding information for school work, but it’s also in competition with Netflix which has become widely popular in terms of entertainment amongst teens that I know. I hear teens discussing Netflix series these days rather than YouTubers, which were a common topic of conversation amongst young people 5 years ago.

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How Teens Use #SocialMedia (Written by an Actual Teenager): Part Three