Average Screen Time by Age

The headline numbers

• Screen time more than triples between infancy and school age: under-2s average 1h 03m a day, 2–4-year-olds 2h 08m, and 5–8-year-olds 3h 28m.
• Teens spend the most: 8h 39m of entertainment screen use a day — and that is before any time on devices for school or homework.
• The jump is recent. Between 2019 and 2021, tweens went from 4h 44m to 5h 33m a day and teens from 7h 22m to 8h 39m.
• For young children the total barely moved (2h 24m in 2020, 2h 27m in 2024), but what they watch changed: gaming rose 65% (23 → 38 minutes), and short-form video went from 1 to 14 minutes a day.
• Adults worldwide average 6h 38m online. Time online is still rising for people under 45 — they spend more than they did a year earlier — while people 55 and older spend considerably less than younger generations.

How does this compare with the guidelines?

The World Health Organization's 2019 guidelines for children under 5 say screen time is not recommended for children under 2, and that for 2- to 4-year-olds sedentary screen time should be no more than 1 hour a day — less is better. The typical under-2 (1h 03m) and 2–4-year-old (2h 08m) are both above that. The guideline is about sitting and watching; it is not a claim that every minute of screen use is harmful.

What these numbers measure — and what they don't

There is no single survey that tracks screen time across every age with the same method, so this page combines three. Children 0–8: parents reported their child's daily screen use in a nationally representative U.S. survey of 1,578 families (Common Sense Media, August 2024). Tweens and teens 8–18: 1,306 young people reported their own entertainment screen use — school and homework time is excluded (Common Sense Media, fall 2021). Adults 16–64: time spent using the internet on any device, from GWI's global survey as compiled by DataReportal.

That means the rows are close, not identical, comparisons: the teen figure leaves out school use, the adult figure counts only online time and averages many countries, and all of it is self-reported. People tend to misjudge their own screen time, so treat these as the best available averages rather than exact measurements. The 8–12 and 5–8 groups overlap at age 8 because they come from different surveys.

Compare yourself

Your phone already logs your real number: Settings → Screen Time on iOS, Digital Wellbeing on Android. See how your country compares on our screen time by country page, work out what your daily average adds up to with the screen time cost calculator, or take the 10-question phone addiction self-test.

Sources

• Common Sense Media, The 2025 Common Sense Census: Media Use by Kids Zero to Eight (survey of 1,578 U.S. parents, August 2024).
• Common Sense Media, The Common Sense Census: Media Use by Tweens and Teens, 2021 (survey of 1,306 U.S. 8- to 18-year-olds, fall 2021).
• DataReportal, Digital 2025: Global Overview Report (GWI survey data, internet users aged 16–64).
• World Health Organization, Guidelines on physical activity, sedentary behaviour and sleep for children under 5 years of age (2019).

Page last reviewed: September 2026. We update the figures when new survey waves are published.