Hispanic teens are the demographic with the highest proportion of members who are "almost constantly" on the main social media platforms, according to a new study by the Pew Research Center.
Hispanic teens aged between 13 and 17 saw the highest rates of respondents for all social media usage, but there were three platforms that stood out: the main one was TikTok, where almost one out of every three Hispanics (32 percent) said they use it "almost constantly," when the country-wide figure is 17 percent. 10 percent of White teens and 20 percent of Black teens gave the same answer.
YouTube was a close second, with 27 percent of Hispanic teens being constantly on the video app, more than 10 percentage points over the overall U.S. figure, which was 16 percent. Snapchat came in third, with 20 percent of all members of this demographic glued to the app. In this case, the national figure was 14 percent, while 12 percent of White and Black teens said they spend time in the app almost constantly.
Instagram is less used by U.S. teens, but Hispanics still were the demographic with the most members using it almost constantly, with 16 percent of all respondents compared to the country's 8 percent. Almost no teens use Facebook anymore. 5 percent of Hispanic teens do so constantly, while the country average was 3 percent.
When it comes to general app usage -that is, those who say they ever use them- practically all Hispanic teens are on YouTube. 96 percent of them said this was the case for them, although the country total is quite close, at 93 percent.
Other apps Hispanics use more than the average are TikTok, Instagram and WhatsApp, while fewer use Snapchat, Facebook and X (formerly Twitter).
Overall, nearly half of U.S. teens say they use the internet "almost constantly," according to the Pew Research Center. "This is on par with what we found last year, but roughly double the 24% who said this in the 2014-2015 survey," the study adds.
Many more Hispanics and Blacks are on the internet constantly when compared to White teens. The figure is 55 percent and 54 percent for the first two, dropping to 38 percent when it comes to Whites.
Another survey involving all age groups showed that most Hispanics regularly use Facebook and YouTube to consume news.
Concretely, the survey shows that 38 percent of all Hispanic respondents said they get their news regularly from Facebook, while 35 percent uses YouTube. The percentages mentioned for Latinos were above average, considering that figures for Facebook, YouTube and Instagram for the overall population were 30, 26 and 16 percent, respectively.
Not far behind, 29 percent uses Instagram for this purpose and 25 percent uses TikTok, a platform in which news consumption from all demographics has skyrocketed in the past year.
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