Whether or not you bought your teen a phone for Christmas, the stats don’t lie —  teenagers are using technology a lot these days. Like, almost constantly. A new survey released just before the new year reveals how much time they’re spending online and what they’re doing there, and it’s eye-opening, to say the least.

The research comes via Pew Research Center, who at the end of 2024 surveyed a diverse group of 13- to 17-year-olds about their tech habits, particularly with social media. They found that teens’ most-used social media platform is YouTube, with 73 percent saying they watch YouTube videos daily. TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat, in that order, are the next most-used platforms. And get this: one-third of teens use at least one of these sites “almost constantly” (the other options were “several times a day” or “about once a day.”). Not surprisingly, older teens are more likely than younger teens to be using these apps.

When broken down by gender, Pew found that girls tend to use TikTok most often, whereas their male counterparts spend more time on YouTube. Basically, video content, both short clips and long-form, reigns supreme with our teens.

The main takeaway is that 96 percent of teens report using the internet daily, with almost half of them saying they’re online “almost constantly.” It might be a hard pill to swallow, especially for Millennial parents who grew up having to share a computer with their siblings and who were unable to go on AIM when someone at home was using the phone. Kids these days could never.

That’s why it’s important not to necessarily forbid screen time (here at Starglow we’re all about balance!), but to keep tabs on your teen’s internet use. The American Psychological Association (APA) has some great suggestions for parents on healthy teen video viewing, some of which include; restricting violent or offensive content, helping them distinguish misinformation from truth, and managing screen time by helping them prioritize offline activities and IRL social interactions.

And though this wasn’t addressed in the Pew study, Psychology Today adds that we should teach our teens ethics and potential risks associated with artificial intelligence (AI), as well as talk to them about why they use the platforms they do. Is it for entertainment purposes? Or are they using TikTok as a search engine to get information a la Google (Spoiler alert: Yes they are, in fact).

We should be teaching our kids how to use technology and social media responsibly — what folks in education refer to as digital citizenship — because it’s certainly not going anywhere.

For more stats and info from Pew Research Center’s survey, check out Teens, Social Media, and Technology 2024.

What surprises you the most about this research on teens’ tech use?

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