Parents don't know as much as they should about what their children are doing with technology. The Pew Research Center recently conducted a study that finds Facebook is out, YouTube is in.
YouTube, Instagram and Snapchat are the most popular online platforms among teens. Fully 95% of teens have access to a smartphone, and 45% say they are online “almost constantly.”
The survey also finds there is no clear consensus among teens about the effect that social media has on the lives of young people today. Minorities of teens describe that effect as mostly positive (31%) or mostly negative (24%), but the largest share (45%) says that effect has been neither positive nor negative.
We talked to Lyndsey Fifield, social media manager at the Heritage Foundation.