Rebecca Siegel
Design Editor

Tumblr, Twitter and YouTube may be dynamic options for social media allowing access 24/7 via a smartphone, but the majority of American teens have crowned Facebook as the social media King.

Eighty-nine percent of social media users between the ages of 12 and 18 use only Facebook regardless of the other options, according to Pew Research Center.

“I use Facebook the most, mainly to connect with my friends who I don’t go to school with or who aren’t even in this country,” senior Emma Herlihy said.

The Facebook login page displays a world map showing The Social Media Giant’s presence on six continents, with the slogan, “Facebook helps you connect and share with the people in your life.”

This type of marketing has brought millions to the social network. By April 2007, there were 20 million active users on Facebook. Today the site boasts 800 million active users.

“Besides Facebook, I use Instagram,” senior Annie Delancie said. “I’m basically on Facebook all the time, and I use Instagram when I need to post a picture.”

Instagram — a photo sharing application available for the iPhone and Android platforms, provides filters to apply on pictures, giving them a vintage vibe, was purchased by Facebook for $1 billion in cash and stocks in April.

“I love the editing options on Instagram, and I love that it’s instant,” Delancie said. “I don’t have to wait until I get home and mess around on iPhoto to achieve those cool light filters.”

Instagram allows users to share photos through Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Foursquare, making connecting with friends easier.

“On Instagram, it’s not just who is following you,” junior Isabella Borges said. “You can upload your Instagram pics to Facebook and all your Facebook friends can check them out.”

Less than 1 percent of teens use the popular social networking site Twitter, according to Pew Research Center.

“I don’t use Twitter, because I don’t really need to,” Delancie said. “Not a lot of my friends are on it.”

While Twitter sparked a youth revolution in spring 2011 in Egypt, it hasn’t reached that level of popularity among teens in the United States. Even smaller numbers of teens regularly maintain accounts on Youtube.

“I use Youtube to watch videos, but I don’t have an account and I don’t upload videos,”

Herlihy said. Google’s video sharing site Youtube boasts 62 percent of online adult users with less than 10 percent of online teen users, according to Pew Research Center.

Last Friday Facebook, an originally private company, opened its doors to public trading at an Initial Public Offering price of $38.

“The company went public because the originalinvestors of the company wanted to see a profit,” Eddy Guiterrez, Vice President-Senior Financial Advisor with Merrill Lynch said.

The social media’s share trading fell flat however due to a lot of stock and not as much demand for the shares.

“It’s pretty expensive, and it might not be a good investment because the likelihood of it devaluing is pretty high,” Guiterrez said. “I would not advise my clients to invest in Facebook.”

Despite average performance in the stock market, Facebook is still the star among its competition.

Even though Youtube, Twitter, Tumblr — a blogging engine — all have made impacts on the new world of social media, Facebook continues to hold the largest teen audience.

“I know people who use all these different social media sites, but Facebook is really all I need to get involved in,” Herlihy said.