In 2021, new research suggested that nearly half of American teenagers said they used the Internet almost without stopping. The study also found that teens who said they were online almost all the time rose from 24 percent in 2015 to 46 percent. The results were based on a public opinion study carried out from April 14 to May 4. The study included 1, 316 teens aged 13 to 17 years old.
The research found that about 95 percent of American teens had smartphones. The study also asked teens about their social media （媒体） behavior. It found that the number of teens using Facebook had dropped to 32 percent, down from 71 percent in 2015. The research showed that teens had moved away from Facebook to spend time on the video-sharing services YouTube and TikTok. About 95 percent of teens said they used Google-owned YouTube, while 67 percent said they used TikTok.
About 62 percent of the teens said they used Instagram, a popular photo-sharing app, which is owned by Facebook's parent company Meta. About 59 percent said they used Snapchat, which is a free messaging and social networking app for smartphones. Less than one fourth of teens said they used Twitter. A quarter of teens who used Snapchat or TikTok said they used these apps almost without stopping, and a fifth of teen YouTube users said the same, the study said. The research found that teen boys were more likely than teen girls to use YouTube. Teen girls were more interested in using TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat.
The services of some apps including Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok had introduced new functions （功能） that were designed to make safer and more suitable for young users.
