US Trends

what percentage of teens use social media

About 9 in 10 teens use social media in some form today, and in the U.S. the best recent estimates cluster around 90–95% of teens using at least one social platform.

Key stat: what percentage of teens use social media?

  • Recent summaries of Pew Research Center surveys report that around 93–95% of U.S. teens (about ages 13–17) use at least one social media app.
  • Some education- and safety-focused analyses describe it as “roughly 95% of kids ages 10–17 using social media,” emphasizing that use is now almost universal in this age band.
  • In practical terms, that means only a small minority (about 1 in 20 teens or fewer) are completely off social media.

Daily and “almost constant” use

Even more striking than basic access is how often teens are on:

  • Around 46% of teens say they are online “almost constantly” when you include all internet use, much of which is social platforms.
  • Across major apps like YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat, about 36% of teens say they use at least one “almost constantly.”
  • A Gallup‑summarized dataset cited in recent 2026 updates notes that teens average about 4.8–5 hours per day on social media , with older teens and girls tending to be on the higher end.

Which platforms they actually use

Among teens who are online, usage shifts by platform, but the big picture is:

  • YouTube : Around 90–93% of teens use it, and roughly 70–75% visit daily, making it the dominant platform.
  • TikTok : About 58–63% of teens use TikTok, with a majority of those users visiting daily and roughly 1 in 5 saying they use it almost constantly.
  • Instagram & Snapchat: Each is used by around half–60%+ of teens, with many checking in at least once a day.

Put simply, nearly all teens use social media, and a large share are not just casual users but heavy, daily—and often near‑constant—users.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.