Minors spend “attached” to the screens, outside of class, about four hours a day, the equivalent of two months a year, preferring social networks such as TikTok to communication applications such as WhatsApp.
This data comes from a study conducted by the Qustodio platform, which specializes in security and digital control for families with more than four million users worldwide.
This platform annually analyzes how minors use the internet: the hours they spend behind screens, the applications and networks they use the most or the consequences hyperconnectivity can have.
The study analyzed trends and screen use among minors aged 4 to 18 in four countries — Spain, the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia — with about 400,000 families participating anonymously, according to data from the platform and quoted by the office Efe.
The person in charge of this platform, Eduardo Cruz, this Wednesday, during the presentation of the study to the press, emphasized the importance of following a “digital diet” to take advantage of the Internet and screens and to understand their risks and threats to avoid .
Among key recommendations and advice for minors to use screens responsibly and non-abusively, Cruz mentioned the importance of establishing a “technology schedule”, discussing digital environments, preventing children from locking themselves in their room to using screens, sharing digital content with the family, offering attractive alternatives in the physical or ‘real’ world and leading by example for the elderly.
Eduardo Cruz also stressed the importance of establishing schedules without connectivity and ensuring that screens do not subtract time or space from other activities such as sleeping, studying or leisure.
Hyperconnectivity or continuous connection in many cases becomes a serious problem, causing addiction problems for countless minors who eventually come to understand the “physical” or real world as “an impediment” to their lives, he warned.
Among the most relevant data, it should be noted that 15.6% of the families who participated in the survey acknowledge that screen abuse causes problems in their daily lives at home, and that these conflicts are repeated once or twice a week in 34 % of families. the homes.
Social networks again became the main digital attraction for minors in 2022, an indicator repeated in the four countries where the survey was conducted.
Tik Tok clearly exceeds the preferences of minors on social networks such as Instagram, increasingly used by the over 30s and 40s, Snapchap, Facebook or Twitter.
On the other hand, in Spain, the use of messaging and communication applications, such as WhatsApp, decreased last year and the time spent by minors in these environments increased from an average of 30 minutes in 2021 to 24 minutes last year.
Among video games, Roblox remains the most popular in the four countries, and according to data collected in the study, minors spend more than two hours playing this game every day.
After the Covid-19 pandemic, the use of educational tools on the internet continued to decline and only one of these platforms, Smartick, continued to increase usage time among minors to an average of 29 minutes per day.
Among the ‘online’ video platforms, Prime Video had a big lead among minors, although it still lags behind Netflix and YouTube, which are still the favorites for youth to watch videos in the four countries.
Twitch, which grew 150% in 2020, the year of the quarantine, recorded another slight decline last year.
Source: DN
