Buzz! Beep! Ping!
Phone call out for attention. They pop up to tell a person there’s something to see on their phone. A new message came in. A fresh video went up. A big story is breaking in the news. It’s hard not to look. Experts wanted to find out how phones impact young people. So, they went straight to the source — teens and preteens.
A group called Common Sense Media did this study. It gathered data from about 200 people between the ages of 11 and 17. The teens checked their phones more than 100 times a day on average. More than half of the teens got at least 237 notifications each day. And some teens got nearly 5,000 notifications in a day.
Most of the notifications come from friends on apps. The teens spent the most time on the video app TikTok. On average, the teens spent about two hours a day on TikTok. But some spent more than seven hours per day.
The study also found that phones affect sleep — in both good ways and bad. Some teens play calming noise on their phones to help them drift off. But others stay up late scrolling and don’t get enough rest.
James Steyer is the head of Common Sense Media. “Teens are struggling to manage their phone use,” he said. He explained that this can hurt “their ability to focus and overall .”
Jenny Radesky is an expert in children’s health. She agrees that phone use can bring up challenges. “Smartphones have become an always-on, sometimes disruptive force,” she said. But she added that “teens are working hard to be savvy and set ."
There are many ways to cut down on phone use. People can turn off notifications or set time limits for each app. It can help to move social media icons off the main phone screen. That way they are a little bit harder to get to.
The experts talked to teens about the study. Some young people shared about the apps that draw them in. And one remembered a time when they lost their phone. “I didn’t have a phone for a week, and that week was amazing,” the 11th-grader said. “Not having a phone takes this weight off you. It almost sets you free."
Updated September 28, 2023, 5:02 P.M. (ET)
By Ashley Morgan
