According to a 2023 survey conducted in the United States, teenagers spent an average of 4.8 hours every day on social media platforms. Girls spent 5.3 hours on social networks daily, compared to 4.4 hours for boys. YouTube and TikTok were the most popular online networks among those aged 13 to 19, with 1.9 and 1.5 hours of average daily engagement, respectively. The most used platform for girls was TikTok, while the most used platform for boys was YouTube. Are teens constantly connected to social media? YouTube, TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat are the most attractive and time-consuming platforms for young internet users. A survey conducted in the U.S. in 2023 found that 62 percent of teenagers were almost constantly connected to Instagram, and 17 percent were almost constantly connected to TikTok. Overall, 71 percent of teens used YouTube daily, and 47 percent used Snapchat daily. Furthermore, YouTube had a 93 percent reach among American teens in 2023, down from 95 percent in 2022. Teens and their internet devices For younger generations especially, social media is mostly accessed via mobile devices, and almost all teenagers in the United States have smartphone access. A 2023 survey conducted in the U.S. found that 92 percent of teens aged 13 to 14 years had access to a smartphone at home, as well as 97 percent of those aged 15 to 17. Additionally, U.S. girls were slightly more likely than their male counterparts to have access to a smartphone.

Teenagers are the 2nd largest group of people affected by social media addiction. Teens ages 13 to 18 years old spend a significant amount of their free time on social media with an average of 3 hours a day.

According to a survey conducted in the United States in 2022, ** percent of pre-teens were using social media applications. Overall, ** percent of respondents aged 11 to 12 years were using TikTok, and ** percent were using Snapchat. Both TikTok and Snapchat state that users of their apps must be at least 13 years of age, with the latter being in compliance with the U.S. Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). Even though Discord and Facebook also have age restrictions of 13 years, ** percent and ** percent of pre-teens were using the online platforms, respectively.

This statistic gives information on the most popular social media sites used by teenage and young adult internet users in the United States as of the third quarter of 2020. During the survey period, it was found that ** percent of responding internet users aged 15 to 25 years used social photo sharing app Instagram.

Despite Snapchat's dominance, Facebook continues to be the more widely used social networking site used by teenagers and young adults7. A total of ** percent of respondents currently use Facebook, compared to ** percent of respondents who stated that they used Snapchat. Yet when teens, whose average age was **, rated their most important social network, Snapchat, Instagram, and Twitter where given more important ratings than Facebook. These social networks are being increasingly visited via mobile devices.

Gen Z and Millennials are the biggest social media users of all age groups.

The results might surprise you when looking at internet users that are active on social media in each country.

The average person has 8-9 social media accounts. This has doubled since 2013, when the average person just had 4-5 accounts.

In this post, I'll give you all the social media addiction statistics you need to be aware of to moderate your social media use.

In 2024, children in the United States spent an average of *** minutes per day on ******. ********* ranked second, with young users engaging with the popular video messaging app for approximately ** minutes per day. By comparison, children in the United States spent ** minutes on average on *********, while the ****** mobile app only saw approximately ***** minutes of daily usage by children and teens in the country.

56.8% of the world’s total population is active on social media.

How much time do people spend on social media? As of 2025, the average daily social media usage of internet users worldwide amounted to 141 minutes per day, down from 143 minutes in the previous year. Currently, the country with the most time spent on social media per day is Brazil, with online users spending an average of 3 hours and 49 minutes on social media each day. In comparison, the daily time spent with social media in the U.S. was just 2 hours and 16 minutes. Global social media usageCurrently, the global social network penetration rate is 62.3 percent. Northern Europe had an 81.7 percent social media penetration rate, topping the ranking of global social media usage by region. Eastern and Middle Africa closed the ranking with 10.1 and 9.6 percent usage reach, respectively. People access social media for a variety of reasons. Users like to find funny or entertaining content and enjoy sharing photos and videos with friends, but mainly use social media to stay in touch with current events friends. Global impact of social mediaSocial media has a wide-reaching and significant impact on not only online activities but also offline behavior and life in general. During a global online user survey in February 2019, a significant share of respondents stated that social media had increased their access to information, ease of communication, and freedom of expression. On the flip side, respondents also felt that social media had worsened their personal privacy, increased a polarization in politics and heightened everyday distractions.

Today the average time spent on social media is 2 hours and 24 minutes today for people aged 16 to 64.

A survey conducted in 2022 revealed that a majority of children aged between 9 and 13 years in urban India spent more than ***** hours per day on social media, videos, and games on the Internet, as reported by about ** percent of parents. Contrariwise, parents who were unsure of how long their children spent on online media accounted for about ** percent of respondents during the survey period.

90% of people aged 18-29 use social media in some form. 15% of people aged 23-38 admit that they are addicted to social media.

The results of which gender uses which platforms are in.

Regional use of social media has a significant effect on the male and female social media statistics.

In 2024, children in the United Kingdom spent an average of *** minutes per day on TikTok. This was followed by Instagram, as children in the UK reported using the app for an average of ** minutes daily. Children in the UK aged between four and 18 years also used Facebook for ** minutes a day on average in the measured period. Mobile ownership and usage among UK children In 2021, around ** percent of kids aged between eight and 11 years in the UK owned a smartphone, while children aged between five and seven having access to their own device were approximately ** percent. Mobile phones were also the second most popular devices used to access the web by children aged between eight and 11 years, as tablet computers were still the most popular option for users aged between three and 11 years. Children were not immune to the popularity acquired by short video format content in 2020 and 2021, spending an average of ** minutes per day engaging with TikTok, as well as over ** minutes on the YouTube app in 2021. Children data protection In 2021, ** percent of U.S. parents and ** percent of UK parents reported being slightly concerned with their children’s device usage habits. While the share of parents reporting to be very or extremely concerned was considerably smaller, children are considered among the most vulnerable digital audiences and need additional attention when it comes to data and privacy protection. According to a study conducted during the first quarter of 2022, ** percent of children’s apps hosted in the Google Play Store and ** percent of apps hosted in the Apple App Store transmitted users’ locations to advertisers. Additionally, ** percent of kids’ apps were found to collect persistent identifiers, such as users’ IP addresses, which could potentially lead to Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) violations in the United States. In the United Kingdom, companies have to take into account several obligations when considering online environments for children, including an age-appropriate design and avoiding sharing children’s data.

Adolescence is often characterized as a stressful period (Arnett, 1999). During the transition from childhood to adulthood, adolescents become increasingly sensitive to social stressors in their environment, while biological changes heighten their reactivity to stress (Gunnar et al., 2009; Lupien et al., 2009; Sisk & Gee, 2022). Recent evidence shows that stress levels among adolescents have been on the rise over the past years, with the constant presence of social media being considered a potentially contributing factor (Weinstein et al., 2024). Specifically, social media can amplify pressures inherent to adolescence (e.g., the need to be liked, conform), expectations (e.g., to respond promptly, meet beauty standards), and fears (e.g., fear of negative evaluation, FoMO), all of which can be particularly stressful for adolescents (Freytag et al., 2021; Steele et al., 2020; Winstone et al., 2023; Wolfers & Utz, 2022). Notably, prolonged exposure to stress not only disrupts daily life but can also increase the risk of serious health issues, such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, anxiety, and depression (Brose et al., 2017; Cohen et al., 2007; Lupien et al., 2009; McEwen, 1998; Rodman et al., 2021; Schmeelk-Cone & Zimmerman, 2003; Sheth et al., 2017).

Studies investigating the impact of social media on stress levels—of which only four among adolescents (Frison & Eggermont, 2015; Nick et al., 2021; Shafi et al., 2021; van der Schuur et al., 2019)—generally found that increased social media use is accompanied by higher stress levels. However, these studies are predominantly based on cross-sectional designs (e.g., Ellithorpe et al., 2024; Frison & Eggermont, 2015; Oyinbo et al., 2024), longitudinal studies with broad time intervals (van der Schuur et al., 2019; Wolfers et al., 2020), or one-time experimental designs (Rus & Tiemensma, 2017; Shafi et al., 2021; Vanman et al., 2018). Such designs do not capture the more nuanced daily fluctuations in social media use and stress. Therefore, we aim to examine whether an increase in social media use leads to an increase in stress among adolescents at a daily level. To test this, we rely on the average within-person effect of social media use on stress across all adolescents in our sample. In addition, we aim to explore to what extent this effect varies across adolescents, by investigating how adolescents’ person-specific effects differ from each other. Finally, we aim to assess how gender, age, and trait resilience may explain these potential differences in person-specific effects. Specifically, we analyze whether the within-person effect of social media use on stress is stronger for girls (vs boys), younger (vs older) adolescents, and adolescents with lower (vs higher) trait resilience.

To address the hypotheses and research questions, the current study relies on intensive longitudinal data collected through a daily diary study among 479 adolescents. The data comprise 44,211 diary observations of social media use and stress across 100 consecutive days. A baseline questionnaire assessed adolescents’ age, gender, and trait level resilience. To analyze our hypotheses and research question, we rely on dynamic structural equation modeling (DSEM), a modeling technique that combines the strengths of multilevel modeling, time-series analyses, and structural equation modeling (McNeish & Hamaker, 2020). This technique provides the tools to investigate within-person effects at the aggregated sample level, as well as the person-specific level. By focusing on daily fluctuations and person-specific effects, this study provides a more nuanced understanding of how adolescents’ social media use impacts their stress from day to day.

Facebook and YouTube are still the most used social media platforms today.

Over 210 million people worldwide suffer from social media addiction.