Report Finds Teens Use Screens More Than 7 Hours a Day, School Work Not Included

As we’re all using screens right now to either write or read this very article, none of what is put forth in a new report from Common Sense Media on screen usage should come as a surprise.

The report, first excerpted in a CNN piece early Tuesday, focuses on screen usage among teens (age 13 to 18) and tweens (age 8 to 12). Not including screen use for school or the “rapidly growing” use of computers for homework, teens are said to be accessing “screen media” roughly seven and a half hours per day, while tweens are averaging just under five hours.

Other notable findings in the report—which pulls from the findings of a nationally representative, probability-based survey of 1,677 people in the U.S.—are listed below:

• The percentage of tweens and teens who say they watch online videos daily (i.e. YouTube, etc.) has expectedly risen dramatically in both groups, with 56 percent of tweens and 68 percent of teens saying they do this.
• Daily computer use for homework-related reasons has more than doubled for both tweens (27 percent) and teens (59 percent).
• On average, young people in lower income households spent “nearly two more hours” utilizing screen-based media each day than those from higher income households.
• Sadly, the majority of young people do not extend the screen prevalence to the practice of making their own videos or other content, with the report stating that just 2 percent of tweens and 3 percent of teens said they spend their screen time in such a way.
• Old school TV, of course, remains on the decline. Today, just 24 percent of teens say their live TV viewing was done on a traditional TV set. 

“It’s a whole new ballgame when kids are watching online video content as opposed to television content because we don’t know where it’s coming from, and we don’t know what the source is or where the algorithms are sending them,” report co-author Vicky Rideout told CNN of the continued TV decline’s pros and purported cons.

To see the full report, click here.