• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, December 16, 2024

New social media research from the Pew Research Center continues to show glaring data points for where teens 13-17 are these days.

Is there a historical media comparison? To some extent, yes.

For big gainers TikTok and Instagram, 60% say they used those social-media platforms daily. (55% for Snapchat). More importantly, 73% use YouTube daily.

In contrast, older digital media platforms Facebook and X show the flip side -- now at 32% and 17%, respectively.

Facebook continues to find its way with the older crowd -- and ever-higher revenues. Meta gained 19% to $40.6 billion in the third quarter.

And what about X? As a private company, it's much harder to tell.

Recent estimates continue to show that despite some narrowing of losses with advertising revenues, there are still deep declines. The company is estimated to be down 5% for all of 2024 to $3.1 billion, according to an Oberlo report via Statista data. It is projected to drop to $2.7 billion in three years.

One might look at digital media around these platforms in a similar way -- although not exactly comparable -- to the historical trend of cable TV when it comes to teens and young adult viewers.

In the mid-1980s and early 1990s, cable TV was the digital media of its time for those young viewers.

Think MTV. We all know where those cable TV networks are today.

Now there is some silver lining for companies like X, with estimates showing user count will inch up by 3% this year to 429 million.

But who is exactly signing on? And are brands interested?

Young media consumers always seem to be a bellwether group when trying to determine where the business is heading. What are they telling us now about future winners and losers?

Maybe we need to go back to see what they were doing with their Sony Walkmans, phone answering machines, and Pac Man video games.