Just over half of children in the United States — 53 percent — now own a smartphone by the age of 11. And 84 percent of teenagers now have their own phones, immersing themselves in a rich and complex world of experiences that adults sometimes need a lot of decoding to understand.
These stats come from a new, nationally representative survey of media use among children ages 8-18, by Common Sense Media, which has been tracking this since 2003.
The findings highlight the myriad ways young people are using their devices. Just ask Ashley Mingo, a junior at the Hudson High School of Learning Technologies in New York City.
“Pinterest — that’s where I look for drawing inspiration and sometimes clothes inspiration when I’m leaving for school,” the 16-year-old explains as she gives a reporter a tour of her smartphone. “Tumblr for writing and reading, and Snapchat to post selfies and see what people say. And Webtoon to read comics and see how comics are formed and how creators got from their beginnings to now.”
The home screen is a shot of her favorite K-pop music star, from a group called Stray Kids.
She says she discovered K-pop while watching a “multi-animator project” — often a music video that’s animated collaboratively by many different people. “And I was like, this song sounds really cool! What is this from? And then I ended up Googling them … and it went downhill from there!” she says with a huge grin.
She names some of her favorite bands: “Stray Kids, BTS, Exo, AB6IX,Twice, Dreamcatcher, Red Velvet … ” She keeps up with her favorite groups on Instagram and Snapchat, where she’s in a huge fan group chat — she knows only a few of the people in real life.
Mingo appeared as a teen representative on a panel in New York City to announce the findings of the new report. It asked children to self-report how often they did an activity, how much they like it, and how much time they spent doing it “yesterday.” The totals? More than 7 hours a day for teens, and nearly 5 hours a day for “tweens” ages 8-12.
One caveat: The survey didn’t fully account for multitasking — which is a pretty common habit. So an hour spent playing a video game while texting with your friends could be counted on the survey as two hours of media use. However, Vicky Rideout, lead author of the report, points out that screen use also commonly happens during commuting, mealtimes, chores, socializing or other non-screen activities.
Ashley Mingo says she gets a lot out of her phone. But she sees a downside too. “Most of the time, because I’m on it so much, I completely forget about sleep and then I’m like, I have to wake up 2 hours later, I really should go to sleep!”
Here are some other highlights of the report, paired with context from our other reporting: