Teen Survey Reveals Shocking Popularity Gap Between iPhone And Android
The Spring edition of the long-going Piper Sandler survey of teen spending habits and tech usage/preferences is out. The results show some consistent year-to-year trends, such as Apple's dominance in tugging at teens' heartstrings and their (parents') wallets, and that Netflix and Nike are still their preferred go-to for media consumption and fashion, respectively. Unlike last year though, TikTok has been toppled from its throne by an unexpected rival.
Published semi-annually, the Teens Survey, by American equity research group Piper Sandler, continues to give some useful and telling insight into what teens prefer in terms of technology, fashion, and food. The survey isn't scientific by any means—partly because it's self-reported—but Piper Sandler has been doing this since 2001 (having surveyed more than 274k teenagers and 65 million spending data points), which means that we have a nice breadth of data to analyze.
For the latest Spring results, 6.455 teens, averaging 16.2 years of age, and an average household income of $65,995 were surveyed. It almost comes as no surprise that when it comes to phones, Android is out, Apple is in—by a significant margin, in fact. Even if the needle only increased by 1% over last year, 88% of teens still prefer iPhones. That's nearly nine of ten of our kids.
That said, it would be interesting to see how the tariffs against China (where iPhone manufacturing is mostly centered) might affect these numbers as the year progresses, if at all. Apple is expected to raise its MSRPs across the board, although one cannot deny or ignore the power of Cupertino's very effective marketing machine.
Beyond the smartphone platform preference, a curious change this time is that Instagram is now the preferred social media time-waster. About 87% of teens preferred the Meta-owned platform over the previous champion TikTok (79%). Snapchap isn't far behind at 72%.
For visual/digital entertainment, about 31% of teens use Netflix for daily video consumption, beating out YouTube (26%) and Hulu (7%). For gaming, Roblox lost some ground since fall 2024, but is still the leading game at 42%.
Leading the charge for fashion are Nike, UGG, and On, while Chick-fil-A, Lays, Red Bull, and Dr. Pepper continue their inroads into destroying healthy eating habits.
The moral of the story is: if you want to embarrass your teen in public, be sure to rock that dingy old Android phone, don those geriatric white New Balance kicks, plus an awesome Stanley Cup in hand (because it's the No. 2 "fashion on its way out" according to the survey).
