Inequality and Teen Social Media Use
American teenagers spend hours online each day, with apps such as YouTube and TikTok dominating their attention. Thirty-five percent spend at least four hours a day on social media or playing video games. The amount of time teens spend engaged in these activities varies across households. The survey finds that teen girls raised by parents without college degrees are on more social media apps, spend more hours using them, and are less inclined to cut back than girls whose parents went to college, while among boys, the same divide emerges in the hours spent gaming.
The class divide in social media use may exacerbate existing inequalities instead of reducing them. Among teen girls, more active social media engagement is associated with negative personal outcomes, including less sleep, lower rates of reading, and lower feelings of personal satisfaction.
The majority of teenagers are spending multiple hours on social media every day. About four in 10 (39 percent) spend three or more hours of their day online. YouTube and TikTok are the most popular social media platforms teens visit. More than seven in 10 (72 percent) spend time on YouTube every week, while six in 10 say the same of TikTok. Gaming also eats up a significant portion of teens’ free time, although less so than social media. More than four in 10 (44 percent) teens spend at least an hour gaming every day.
Teen girls raised in less educated households are more likely to use Instagram (66 percent vs. 57 percent), Snapchat (49 percent vs. 44 percent), Facebook (31 percent vs. 15 percent), and X (12 percent vs. 6 percent). The education gap is largest in TikTok use. Nearly three-quarters (73 percent) of teen girls raised by parents without college degrees spend time on the app, compared with only about half (53 percent) of teen girls whose parents have college degrees. There is also a significant difference in the number of apps they use.[v] Forty-one percent of teen girls with non-college-educated parents report using at least four different social media apps, compared with 25 percent of teen girls raised by college-educated parents.
This same gap is also evident in the amount of time teen girls spend on social media. About one in five (21 percent) say they spend between one and two hours on social media every day. Thirty-nine percent of teens report they spend less than an hour a day or do not use social media at all. Teen girls whose parents did not go to college, however, log more hours on social media than any of their peers. Nearly half (49 percent) of teen girls raised by parents without a college degree report spending three or more hours a day using social media, compared with 36 percent of teen girls with college-educated parents.
Parental education is also correlated with teens’ efforts to reduce their screen time. Among girls, those raised in households with parents of higher education levels are more likely to report attempting to reduce their time spent online. Nearly six in 10 (58 percent) teen girls raised by college-educated parents say they have tried to reduce their social media activity in the past 12 months. In contrast, only 40 percent of teen girls who have non-college-educated parents report attempts to lessen their social media activity.
There is no evidence of the same divide among teen boys; they report similar social media usage patterns regardless of parental education. More evident education divides show up in boys’ gaming habits. Teen boys raised by parents without college degrees spend substantially more time gaming. Nearly three in 10 (28 percent) teen boys raised by parents without college degrees say they spend an average of four or more hours a day playing video games. Among teen boys with college-educated parents, only 19 percent play video games this often. Among teen girls, it’s only 7 percent.
