By now, it is generally agreed upon that social media is designed to be addictive, but a new survey from Gallup indicates that the problem may be worse than previously thought. 51% of U.S. teenagers report spending at least four hours a day on various social media apps including, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and X(the company formally known as Twitter). 1,500 adolescents were polled for the survey and the usage amounts to 4.8 hours per day for the average American teen across seven social media platforms tested in the survey.
Across age groups the times vary, 4.1 hours a day for 13-year-olds to as high as 5.8 hours per day for 17-year-olds. Girls, the survey reveals, spent more than hours on social media than boys, 5.3 hours vs. 4.4 hours, respectively.
The poll conducted by Gallup from the Familial and Adolescent Health Survey from June 26 to June 17, 2023 collected data from 6,643 parents and 1,591 adolescents who were the children of the parents. The survey asked about their well-being, parenting practices, youth mental health, activities, quality of the parent-child relationships, and other topics. The data was collected among rising concerns from academics that social media use is habit forming and leads to overconsumption and can contribute to mental health problems.
The results show that YouTube and TikTok were the the most popular apps among teenagers. Teens say they spend an average of 1.9 hours per day on YouTube and 1.5 hours prepay on TikTok, with boys spending more time on YouTube and girls more on TikTok. Instagram is also popular with teenagers, attracting 0.9 hours of use a day.
Adolescents were asked about the “big 5 personality traits”, one such trait that is deemed particularly relevant, conscientiousness, pertains to self-control and self-regulation. The least conscientious teens (who scored in the bottom quartile on the survey) spend an average of 1.2 hours more per day on social media than those who ranked as highly conscientious. Of the remaining personality traits, emotional stability, openness to experience, agreeableness and extroversion are all negatively correlated with social media use, however the associations appear weaker compared to conscientiousness.
Comparatively, adolescents report 1.8 hours less on social media if their parents strongly agree that they restrict screen time, compared to those with parents who disagree. Of parents with children aged 3 to 19, one in four (25%) strongly agree that they restrict screen time for their children. The education level of the parents is weakly related to restriction, those with graduate degrees are more likely than parents with less education to restrict screen time.
Political ideology of the parents is more closely related to restrictions. 41% of “very conservative” parents strongly agree that they restrict screen time. compared to 26% of conservative parents and 23% of moderate, liberal or very liberal parents. Very liberal parents are twice as likely to strongly disagree that they restrict screen time.
Among declining mental health for teenagers, many scholars have taken to investigating social media since the time spent on them has increased. Studies point out how tech companies purposely design the apps to make you spend more time on them. A 2022 article in the journal American Economic Review, had economists report results of an experiment with adolescent designed to affect their use on social media apps, concluded that 31% stemmed from ‘self-control problems’.
This is in line with the literature on ‘digital addiction’, teens who spend more time online and on social media are less conscientious and less likely to live with parents who restrict screen time. The second part of the analysis related that these characteristics also predict poor mental health and can explain at least some of the observed relationship between social media use and mental health issues.