Teenagers spending habits dip due to coronavirus: Survey

Piper Sandler’s biannual teen survey found that teens annual spending dropped 13% from spring of 2019, as teenagers are concerned for their finances during the pandemic. Yahoo Finance’s Julia La Roche shares the latest details.

Video transcript

ADAM SHAPIRO: I want to turn this over to Julia La Roche because we got some interesting insight-- from what was it, Piper Sandler? It's the-- they do it twice a year, right, their teen survey?

JULIA LA ROCHE: That's right, Adam. It's the Taking Stock with Teens Survey. It's their biannual survey. This was the 39th survey that they've done, and it's, you know, kind of like a good way to get a pulse on what's on the teenagers' mind these days, where they're putting their money. And I've got to say, some pretty interesting insights.

The coronavirus was the number-two concern for teenagers for the social and political concerns. And, Adam, this was actually unaided. This is what they were responding [INAUDIBLE] organically in the survey.

They surveyed 5,200 teenagers from across 41 states, about 50% male, 50% female. And they did the survey from February 17 through March 27, and basically all of the teenagers who were surveyed were at home. Their schools had been closed. They were, you know, talking about this during the quarantine.

And another thing that was really interesting is their planned spending for the year. For 2020, the annual spend is the lowest it's been since the fall of 2011. They're planning to spend about $2,300. Actually, the exact figure is $2,270 for this year. That's-- again, going back to the fall of 2011, that's the lowest level it has ever been.

Some highlights, though, for these quarantined teenagers-- Amazon remains the number-one e-commerce site. This has been the case for them, but they were favored even more than they were just going back a year ago. It's now 53%, up from 50%.

As you can imagine, these teenagers are using social media. They're staying connected with their peers. Instagram is still the top social-media platform. It's the one that they use the most. It's not their favorite. Their favorite is Snapchat, which might be a little surprising to some folks. And the newcomer TikTok-- you've seen the videos everywhere. TikTok debuted at the number-three spot for the most used social-media app.

Facebook kind of still hanging in there, moving up a little bit. This is something to watch. In recent years, teenagers have been opting for other ones. Although I'll point out, Instagram, of course, is owned by Facebook now.

For video streaming, Netflix is still holding the top spot at 35%-- or 33%, rather. That's down from 35% in the fall of 2019. Some newcomers to the video-streaming space, Disney+ and Apple TV were garnering more share from the teenagers.

And then going back, yes, I mentioned coronavirus the number-two concern. The number-one concern, sustainability, the environment. These are some, you know, environmentally conscious young people out there. Adam.