• The Pew Research Center surveyed American teenagers about social media and technology.

• Seventeen percent said they use Elon Musk’s social media app X – a sharp decline from a decade ago.

• More and more teenagers are using Metas Instagram, Facebook and increasingly WhatsApp.

American teenagers just don’t love X.

It is one of the least used major social media sites among U.S. teens, followed by Reddit and Threads, according to a new study from the Pew Research Center.

The Washington DC-based think tank surveyed nearly 1,400 teenagers between September and October to collect the data. It found that 17% of teen respondents said they use

Elon Musk bought X, formerly Twitter, in 2022.

Representatives for X did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

Other popular social media sites also saw a decline in teen usage.

YouTube, owned by Google, attracted the highest percentage of teen users, although the share fell from 95% to 90% between 2022 and 2024. ByteDance’s TikTok took second place, with 63% of respondents saying they use the app, compared to 67% two years ago.

Snap Inc.’s Snapchat recorded 55%, another slight decline from 59% in 2022.

Instagram, owned by Meta, was used by 61%, about the same as two years ago, while Meta’s Facebook also remained stable at 32%. Reddit also remained consistent: 14% of teens reported using the app, the same as in 2022.

Threads, which launched Meta in 2023, was used by 6% of teenagers.

There has only been one social media site that has become increasingly popular among teenagers in the last two years: WhatsApp.

The Meta-powered messaging app went from 17% of teens saying they used it in 2022 to 23% this year — overtaking X among teen users, according to Pew surveys.

Meta, then Facebook Inc., bought WhatsApp for $22 billion in 2014, an investment the company says is finally paying off.

During Meta’s third-quarter earnings call in November, the company reported a 48% year-over-year increase in non-advertising revenue, largely driven by WhatsApp.

The increase in sales was largely due to the app’s product, which allows businesses to pay to chat directly with customers.

But WhatsApp is also known to be ideal for large group chats, which are becoming increasingly popular among teenagers.

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