• by Karlene Lukovitz  @KLmarketdaily, April 8, 2022

A new survey provides more evidence that Meta has good reason to fear TikTok’s hold on teens, the demographic that drives the bulk of social media advertising spend. 

TikTok is now teens’ favorite social media platform — surpassing Snapchat for the first time — while Meta’s Facebook (along with Twitter) barely register within that age group, according to the latest Piper Sandler Taking Stock With Teens survey. 

The poll, conducted among 7,100 U.S. teens from Feb. 16 to March 22, found 33% favoring TikTok — up from 29% in Fall 2020, when the last semi-annual teen survey was conducted. 

Snapchat was favored by 31% — flat with last spring’s survey, but down from 35% last fall. 

Meta’s Instagram again came in third, at 22%, down a bit from the last survey. 

Meanwhile, just 3% said they prefer Facebook, and just 2% favor Twitter.

However, Instagram leads on the engagement front, with 89% of teens reporting that they use it every month, versus 84% saying they use Snap each month and 80% saying the same about TikTok.

Facebook? Just 31% say they use it each month — fewer than Twitter and Pinterest.

On average, teens reported spending 4.2 hours per day on social media.

Turning to other tech trends, there’s more bad news for Meta: Nearly half (48%) of teens are either unsure about or not interested in the metaverse.

On the streaming front, teens reported spending 30% of their daily video consumption on Netflix and the same percentage on YouTube, distantly followed by Hulu, at 8%. HBO Max gained share. Movie-wise, Disney Studios’ mindshare among teens is on the rise.

For the first time in these surveys, YouTube outpaced cable TV in teens’ reported time spent.

The only two categories that exceed male teen spending on video games (12%) are food (20%) and clothing (16%). Video game spending among males remains above survey history averages.

While 26% of teens own a VR device, just 5% use it daily.

Fully 87% of teens report owning an iPhone, and 87% expect an iPhone to be their next phone. Nearly three quarters (72%) report having AirPods.

Apple Pay ranked first among payment apps, partly due to the high penetration of iPhones among teens.

PYPL’s Venmo ranked No. 2 (with the PayPal app No. 4) behind Apple Pay among payment apps used in the last month while SQ’s Cash App ranked No. 3

For buy now pay later (BNPL), teens said they used PayPal “Pay in 4” most frequently, followed by SQ’s Afterpay.

Cash is still the most used payment method: 89% of teens said they used cash in the past month.