In case you needed a reminder, TikTok is very popular among teen users.

According to the latest survey data from Piper Sandler, which incorporates responses from over 14,500 US teens, TikTok is their primary social app of choice, dwarfing Instagram, Facebook and Twitter, which all continue to decline in teen preference.

As you can see in this chart (via Marketing Charts), Snapchat also remains relatively popular with teen users, though it has lost some ground, as TikTok has gained, while Instagram has dropped significantly since its peak in 2019.

Of course, this is nothing new – Meta itself has conducted internal reports which show that it’s losing ground with younger audiences, an element that it’s made a high priority to address moving forward.

How, exactly, Meta plans to halt that decline is hard to say, but it seems to believe that creating more opportunity for creators, and enticing more internet stars across to its apps, could be a key way to lure more youngsters back to its platforms.

But I’m not sure that’s going to work out, while Reels, which has become increasingly popular on IG and Facebook, is also not quite as good as TikTok is at retaining user attention.

Yet, Meta needs young users to remain relevant. It knows as well as anyone that it was initially able to usurp MySpace as the leading social media platform because it won over younger users, which sparked a mass migration to its app.

Meta also needs youngsters to be engaged for its broader metaverse push – because if they don’t think the metaverse is cool, it’s hard to imagine anyone else is going to either. It’s also these younger users who already spend their time interacting in metaverse-like spaces, like Roblox and Fortnite, which is key to defining the next stage.

Meta needs them, but right now, based on charts like this, it increasingly seems like youngsters don’t need Meta.

This is a key trend to note, both for immediate marketing, in reaching young audiences, and longer-term shifts.

You can read Piper Sandler’s full ‘Taking Stock with Teens’ report for Fall 2022 here.