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.

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.

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.

As of June 2020, ** percent of parents to U.S. teens aged 14 to 17 years stated that their kids were spending more than four hours per day on electronic devices since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Only ** percent of responding parents stated that their teens had used electronic devices daily for more than four hours before the COVID-19 pandemic. Overall, the pandemic triggered a rise in the use of electronic devices among American children under 13 and teenagers with screentime now double that of what it used to be across all age groups. YouTube, Netflix and Instagram dominateIn an ongoing survey between 2015 and 2020 it was reported that the most popular video platforms among teens in the U.S. were Netflix and YouTube, and the pandemic has done little to shift that. Cable TV viewership continued to decline throughout 2020, while Hulu rose in popularity during this time. Meanwhile, despite a slight drop in viewership Netflix and YouTube retained their positions as the top two video services after the onset of the pandemic. YouTube and Instagram were also named the most popular social media channels among teens and young adults, as of the third quarter of 2020. Due to their booming popularity, it is no wonder that advertisers have been increasingly targeting these networks, with social media add spend having been on the rise each year since 2017. The biggest growth surge has come from mobile advertising, while spend on desktop advertising has remained nearly the same. Texting and phone calls most preferred during lockdownAs most of the world entered lockdown during the peak of the Coronavirus pandemic in April 2020, teens in the U.S. were asked which technologies they had used to virtually connect with friends and family during this time. 'Texting' was the most preferred method, named by over ** percent followed by phone calls. Meanwhile, video chat and social media came in third.

📊 Social Media vs Productivity — Realistic Behavioral Dataset (30,000 Users)

This dataset explores how daily digital habits — including social media usage, screen time, and notification exposure — relate to individual productivity, stress, and well-being.

🔍 What’s Inside?

The dataset contains 30,000 real-world-style records simulating behavioral patterns of people with various jobs, social habits, and lifestyle choices. The goal is to understand how different digital behaviors correlate with perceived and actual productivity.

🧠 Why This Dataset is Valuable

• ✅ Designed for real-world ML workflows
  Includes missing values, noise, and outliers — ideal for practicing data cleaning and preprocessing.

• 🔗 High correlation between target features
  The perceived_productivity_score and actual_productivity_score are strongly correlated, making this dataset suitable for experiments in feature selection and multicollinearity.

• 🛠️ Feature Engineering playground
  Use this dataset to practice feature scaling, encoding, binning, interaction terms, and more.

• 🧪 Perfect for EDA, regression & classification
  You can model productivity, stress, or satisfaction based on behavior patterns and digital exposure.

🧾 Columns & Feature Info

📌 Notes

• Contains NaN values in critical columns (productivity, sleep, stress) for data imputation tasks
• Includes outliers in media usage, coffee intake, and notification count
• Target columns are strongly correlated for multicollinearity testing
• Multi-purpose: regression, classification, clustering, visualization

💡 Use Cases

• Exploratory Data Analysis (EDA)
• Feature engineering pipelines
• Machine learning model benchmarking
• Statistical hypothesis testing
• Burnout and mental health prediction projects

📥 Bonus

👉 Sample notebook coming soon with data cleaning, visualization, and productivity prediction!

Background: Problematic smartphone use (PSU) has been associated with screen time in general, but little is known about the effect of different screen-based activities. We examined the associations of self-reported time spent on overall and specific screen-based activities with PSU and its addictive symptoms in Hong Kong Chinese adults.Methods: We analyzed data from 562 smartphone owners (56.5% female; 82.1% aged 25–64 years) in a population-based telephone survey in 2017. PSU was measured using Smartphone Addiction Scale-Short Version (range 10–60) which includes symptoms of daily-life disturbance, withdrawal, cyberspace-oriented relationship, overuse, and tolerance. Screen time was self-reported as average hours per day spent on the internet, online book/newspaper/magazine, online video, and social networking sites (SNS). Multivariable linear regression analyzed the associations of self-reported screen time with PSU severity and symptoms. Interaction effects of sex, age group, educational attainment, and monthly household income were examined.Results: Self-reported time spent on overall screen-based activities was associated with PSU severity (β = 1.35, 95% CI 0.15, 2.55) and withdrawal and overuse symptoms, after adjusting for sociodemographic and health-related variables. Independent association was observed for self-reported SNS time with PSU severity (β = 1.42, 95% CI 0.35, 2.49) and symptoms of withdrawal and cyberspace-oriented relationship, after mutually adjusting for time on other activities. The strongest association between self-reported SNS time and PSU severity was observed in younger than older adults (β = 4.36, 95% CI 2.58, 6.13; P for interaction = 0.004).Conclusions: The independent association of self-reported SNS time with PSU and core addictive symptoms highlighted the addiction potential of SNS use, particularly in younger users.

As of the third quarter of 2024, the average daily time spent using the internet on mobile phones among people in Malaysia was around **** hours and ** minutes. By comparison, people spent around *** hours and ** minutes on social media every day. These numbers signified the importance of being present on the internet among Malaysians. Internet accessibility in Malaysia Presumably for convenience reasons, almost every internet user in Malaysia preferred accessing the internet on their smartphone. The upward trend of population coverage of 4G LTE mobile network in the country since 2016 may have contributed to this preference. Besides, Malaysia is one of the countries with the highest rates of mobile internet penetration in Asia. Main activities on the internet Malaysia has shown significant improvement in its internet infrastructure in recent years, which has allowed the internet users in the country to be more active online. The internet usage in Malaysia has mostly revolved around personal purposes, such as participating in social networks. As of January 2024, Malaysia recorded around ** million active social media users. A 2020 survey revealed that every internet user in Malaysia had about 9.6 social media accounts on average.

According to a survey conducted in June 2023, adults in the United States spent more time per day on TikTok than on any other leading social media platform. Overall, respondents reported spending an average of 53.8 minutes per day on the social video app. YouTube and Twitter ranked second and third, each with an average of 48 minutes and 34 minutes spent on the platforms per day, respectively.

U.S. teens have time for certain platforms

Different social media platforms attract different demographics, with teenagers in the United States being more drawn to TikTok and YouTube over Facebook. In 2023, teenagers in the United States spent an average of almost two hours on YouTube and 1.5 hours on TikTok every day, 1451257 while Facebook was used by teens for less than half an hour per day. Furthermore, social media habits differ between genders, as teen girls were more likely to spend more time than boys on Instagram.

TikTok is king for teens and Gen Z

Although spending 1.5 hours on the Generation Z app of choice may sound rather modest, some TikTok users devote much more of their time to the platform . According to a survey conducted in the United States in 2022, around eight percent of teenagers in the United States spent over five hours a day on TikTok. 1417187 whereas another 22 percent reported spending between two and three hours daily on the video-based app.

In 2024 in Poland, both 7-14 and 15-18 year-olds spent, on average, more than two hours per day on social media.

Humans discount rewards as a function of the delay to their receipt. This tendency is referred to as delay discounting and has been extensively researched in the last decades. The magnitude effect (i.e., smaller rewards are discounted more steeply than larger rewards) and the trait effect (i.e., delay discounting of one reward type is predictive of delay discounting of other reward types) are two phenomena which have been consistently observed for a variety of reward types. Here, we wanted to investigate if these effects also occur in the context of the novel but widespread reward types of Instagram followers and likes and if delay discounting of these outcomes is related to self-control and Instagram screen time. In a within-subject online experiment, 214 Instagram users chose between smaller, immediate and larger, delayed amounts of hypothetical money, Instagram followers and likes. First, we found that the magnitude effect also applies to Instagram followers and likes. Second, delay discounting of all three reward types was correlated, providing further evidence for a trait influence of delay discounting. Third, no relationships were found between delay discounting and self-control as well as Instagram screen time, respectively. However, a user’s average like count was related to delay discounting of Instagram likes.

During the third quarter of 2023, it was found that the daily use of the internet via any device amounted to *** hours and ** minutes on average in Ireland. Furthermore, it was reported that daily use of social media totaled to *** hour and ** minutes per day, while the surveyed internet users in the country watched television (either via broadcast or streaming) for more than ***** hours and ** minutes per day.

Hong Kong internet users spent an average of *** hour ** minutes each day on social media, according to a 2024 digital usage survey. YouTube gained the highest attention with monthly usage time averaging ** hours and ** minutes per user, which means that users spent about ** minutes a day on the platform. Facebook came in second with ** hours and ** minutes in the monthly screen time, down by ***** hours. Instagram, on the other hand, up by *** hour to ** hours and ** minutes.

Mean ratings of the content and face validation by experts of the digital screen exposure questionnaire.

As of the third quarter of 2024, internet users in the Philippines spent an average of **** hours accessing the internet on various devices, according to a global survey. In terms of devices, most Filipinos have used their mobile phones to surf the web. Internet usage of Filipinos Being the population with the most time spent using the internet in the region, Filipino internet users have been taking advantage of the ease of communication and access to information and entertainment that the internet offers. Aside from just browsing the web, accessing social media has been popular among a large share of the Filipino population. As of the third quarter of 2023, Meta platforms such as Facebook and Instagram, along with TikTok, were the most used social media platforms in the country. These platforms were used to connect with friends and family, and to access news and information, stream video content, and find products and services to purchase. Level of internet security in the Philippines Since most activities have been digitalized, cybersecurity threats and online fraud have been a growing concern among internet users. In the Philippines, over ** million web threats have been detected in 2022. Among those who shop on social media, product fraud was identified as the most common fraud type, along with non-delivery of products or services and payment fraud. To address this, the national government amended its cybersecurity laws to ensure better security of internet users in the Philippines.

According to the source, American children under two years spent an average time of ** minutes per day consuming media on screen. However, the actual screen time varied considerably among this group: whereas ** percent of children did not consume any media on screen, almost one third (** percent) spent more than one hour with screen media.

According to a 2023 survey conducted in the United States, Gen Z respondents were spending the most time using their phones, over *** hours a day. By contrast, Baby Boomers recorded a daily screen time of roughly ***** hours and ** minutes.  Many users feel addicted to smartphones As technology’s role in our everyday life increases, consumers tend to spend more and more time using electronic devices, whether it is for working and studying on laptops and tablets, watching TV or scrolling social media on smartphones. As a consequence, many users across all generations feel somewhat addicted to smartphones. According to a 2023 survey conducted in the United States, Gen Z users felt addicted to such devices the most, followed by Millennials. Taking a step back and nostalgia for early 2000s How can we combat the overwhelming urge to stay connected and take a step back from our always-on reality? In an effort to reduce screen time, many users, especially those in Gen Z, are expressing a sense of nostalgia for early 2000s technology, particularly dumb phones and wired headphones. For instance, during a 2024 survey in the United States, ** percent of Gen Z respondents stated they would be interested in purchasing dumb phones, followed by ** percent of Millennials - a trend that might involve more users in the future.

As of the third quarter of 2024, Canadians spent an average of one hour and ** minutes per day on social media and more than * hours per day using the internet in general. TV consumption was also high at * hours and ** minutes, while Canadians devoted less time to music streaming or gaming activities. Internet usage trends in Canada Canada’s online population has steadily increased over the past two decades. In 2024, the number of internet users in Canada surpassed a record **** million, which translates to approximately **** percent of the Canadian population using the internet for information, communication, and entertainment. Given that most traditional media formats can now be accessed online, Canadians have gradually shifted from TV, radio, and magazine consumption towards digital channels. That said, some forms of analog media and entertainment experienced a surge in demand following the outbreak of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic in 2020. What are the leading social media platforms in Canada? Social media has become one of the most popular online activities among Canadian internet users. In 2024, Canada’s social network user penetration stood at ** percent, and according to the latest forecasts, this figure will surpass ** percent by 2028. This rapid increase in social media usage is spearheaded by rising mobile adoption and the ever-increasing selection of digital platforms that Canadians can use to upload photos, send direct messages, or simply pass the time. Facebook was the leading mobile social media website in Canada as of 2024, outpacing Pinterest and Instagram by a large margin of visits.

As of the third quarter of 2024, online users in Hong Kong stated that they spent an average of *** hours every day on the internet, and an hour and ** minutes on social media. The financial hub has about ************* internet users.

The average daily time spent with digital media in the United States is expected to increase from *** minutes (seven hours and 19 minutes) in 2022 to close to ***** hours in 2025. Higher online media consumption in 2020 was partially attributed to the coronavirus outbreak. Impact of COVID-19 on media consumption In-home media consumption grew sharply in March 2020 in the first stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. More than ** percent of U.S. respondents reported spending more time watching shows and films on streaming services, and ** percent were reading books or listening to audiobooks more than usual. Despite predictions that this spike in media usage would fall after the initial implementation of shelter-in-place orders, consumers also continued spending more time with media in the summer of 2020. The same survey, held in July that year, also asked participants about their plans to continue with their increased media consumption after the pandemic has run its course. This garnered different responses, with only a handful of U.S. adults planning to carry on investing more time in most media activities. Again though, watching movies and shows on streaming platforms and reading or listening to books were the most popular options.

In the third quarter of 2024, the average daily time spent using the internet was around *** hours and **** minutes in Vietnam. In the same period, Vietnamese internet users spent around over ** hour per day to watch TV via streaming or online.