It’s understandable that being stuck in the house over the past two years has resulted in kids spending more time on their screens, and now according to Common Sense, a new report examines just how bad media use by teens and tweens has gotten.
A new Common Sense report reveals:
Media use by eight- to 18-year-olds increased so much over the past two years, that it’s gone up more than the four years prior to the pandemic. From 2019 to 2021, entertainment screen use (not including media and tech work for school or homework), was up by 17% for both tweens and teens. That’s compared to 3% for tweens and 11% for teens between 2015 and 2019.
Over the past two years, average daily screen time for has gone from 4-hours-44 minutes to 5-hours-33 minutes for tweens, and from 7-hours-22 minutes to 8-hours-39-minutes for teens.
Not surprising, a lot of that screen time is spent on social media. 84% of teens say they use social media. Although only 34% say they enjoy using social media “a lot.”
And parents should be a little concerned about their social media use, with 38% of those eight to 12, an age group that’s not supposed to have access to major social media sites, saying they use such sites.
As for how they really feel about certain sites. When asked which social media sites they wouldn’t want to live without, YouTube was by far the top choice (32%), followed by
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- SnapChat (20%)
- TikTok (13%)
- Instagram (13%)
- Discord (6%)
- Facebook (6%)
- Twitter (3%)
Source: Common Sense
