A mind-blowing number of teens are spending 7+ hours a day on social media

And it’s even more for some groups of teens

Our understanding of what kids do online is always going to lag a little behind. By the time adults have figured out what “6, 7” means, kids have already moved on to another meme. Teens flock to a social media platform and then abandon it when it’s not cool anymore.

It’s especially tough for the administrators of large national surveys, like Monitoring the Future (MtF), that are done every year. They don’t want to change the survey too much since that makes it difficult to compare responses over the years, but they also want to make sure they are keeping up with the times.

From 2018 to 2023, MtF asked teens “About how many hours on an average DAY do you spend on social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.?” The question was outdated almost as soon as it was asked. Facebook use was already going out of style among teens in 2018 (because Grandma was on Facebook). Twitter has never had considerable market share among teens. Instagram is the only platform listed in the item that a majority of teens use. And of course no one calls them “social networking sites” anymore.

That’s probably why MtF updated its question in 2024 to “About how many hours on an average DAY do you spend . . . on social media sites like TikTok, YouTube, Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram, X, etc.?” At long last, the question includes the platforms teens use the most. Choices ranged from “none” to “9 hours or more.” Now we can finally get an idea of how much time teens are spending on social media in one of the largest and most reliable nationally representative surveys of U.S. teens.

In 2023, before the update, U.S. 8^th and 10^th graders (13 to 16 years old) estimated they spent about 3 hours a day using social media. In 2024, after the question mentioned the platforms teens actually use, their estimate was 4 and a half hours a day. Among girls, it was 5 hours a day. That’s an enormous amount of time.

But that’s not even the crazy part. The crazy part is how many are spending 7 or more hours a day using social media – close to the time commitment of a full-time job.