3 questions on this subject, answered from our own work, with the numbers.
Dubit found that age 12 is the year social features unlock. Our study, published February 2026, covered 3,009 households in the US and UK and platforms including Snapchat, TikTok, Instagram and YouTube. It measured each single year of age from 10 to 12, with about 204 to 210 young people at each age. On several of those platforms the jump from 11 to 12 is sharper than the jump from 10 to 11. Snapchat direct-message use is 18.6% at age 11 and 25.7% at age 12.
No. "The Big Five", a Dubit Trends study of 3,009 households in the US and UK published in February 2026, found the two markets use the same five platforms differently. WhatsApp is one example: among 13 to 15 year olds, 76.6% in the UK use it daily, against 33.0% in the US. In the US, sharing leans to public platforms. In the UK it is split almost evenly between public platforms and private messages.
Young people use TikTok to follow people they know and YouTube to follow what they watch. That is what Dubit's study of 3,009 households in the US and UK found. Among 1,145 young people who use both, 44.3% follow friends on TikTok against 29.5% on YouTube. On YouTube, 39.2% follow gamers and 29.2% follow TV channels, against 29.8% and 19.6% on TikTok.