The favorite networks of American teenagers are, unsurprisingly, YouTube, TikTok and Instagram. It is the young girls who spend the most time there.
The numbers are increasing from year to year. According to a study carried out by the American polling institute Gallup, more than half of young people aged 13 to 19 (51%) in the United States spend an average of four hours per day on social networks. All combined, whether it is the Chinese short video application Tiktok, the video platform Youtube, the application dedicated to photos Instagram, or even X (formerly Twitter).
The study was carried out between June 26 and July 27, 2023, on approximately 1,500 American adolescents.
The statistics increase even more among young girls, who spend 5.3 hours on average per day, compared to 4.4 for young boys. All genders combined, the figures are highest at 17: 62% spend more than four hours on the networks per day, with a daily average of 5.8 hours.
Youtube in the lead, Twitter shunned
Among boys, it is the Youtube platform which comes first among the most consumed networks. For girls, it’s Tiktok, a particularly controversial application in the United States. Each of the two networks reaches almost two hours of viewing per day.
With Instagram, they form the top three. Twitter, renamed X, on the other hand, no longer appeals much to young Americans, with only 0.2 hours per day spent scrolling through the news. Elon Musk’s platform is still ahead of Whatsapp, which however does not have the same use, given that it is a messaging application.
As these numbers increase from year to year, fears related to social media are becoming increasingly clear. Their responsibility in cases of cyberharassment in France has notably been singled out, in which they have been accused of not taking strong enough measures to protect their young users.
The risk of illegal content and disinformation propagated by these platforms has also been noted, particularly in the European Union, in the recent context of Hamas attacks against Israel. The commission sent a letter to the main platforms calling on them, among other things, to protect young people against shocking images and disinformation.
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2023-10-16 16:10:30
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