Adolescents on average spend three hours and 17 minutes a day on their smartphones, with girls using their phones more than boys, new research by Stellenbosch University has revealed.
The report by Daniël le Roux from the department of information science and Jennifer Feldman from the department of education policy studies provides empirical evidence of how teenagers in South Africa use their phones, which the researchers dubbed their “constant companions”, at home and at school.
The research aims to advance understanding of the role of phones in the lives of adolescents.
It highlights key trends in smartphone ownership, use frequency, social media engagement and parental controls on screen time.
Access to these statistics is important for the planning and implementation of interventions that encourage and promote healthy phone habits among adolescents, the researchers said.
They collaborated with five former model C high schools — semi-private schools that were reserved for white students during apartheid — to collect data on how adolescents use their smartphones.
They also spoke to parents, teachers and school management teams about their attitudes towards phone use at home and in the classroom.
In total, 2 195 adolescents, 2 264 parents and 203 teachers took part in the project.
Almost all the adolescents (99.2%) had smartphones. On average, they spent 197 minutes (three hours and 17 minutes) a day on their phones, with girls using their phones more (219 minutes or three hours and 39 minutes) than boys (176 minutes or two hours and 56 minutes).
“As a researcher in this field, that is not a surprising number,” Le Roux told the Mail & Guardian.
“It is comparable to international figures. It does seem like more or less what one would expect, particularly in the Global North, so we’ll see similar figures in the United States.
“Our figures among older adolescents — student-age adolescents — would be slightly higher, so maybe 30 minutes more per day on average.
“The fact that girls spend more time on their phones is also not surprising and is in line with current findings in other places in the world,” Le Roux said.
Daily phone use increases with age and teens in higher grades tend to spend more time on their devices.
WhatsApp, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube are the most popular social media platforms among teens. Girls use social media more than boys, with over 12% reporting that they check these platforms constantly.
Boys, on the other hand, spend more time gaming on their phones (22.6 minutes a day) than girls (19.9 minutes a day). Boys also play more computer/console games (33.6 minutes a day on average) than girls (10.9 minutes a day on average).
The researchers were, however, surprised to find that, given the increase in phone use among teens in recent years, most parents do not limit or regulate the amount of time their children spend on them.
Just under 60% of adolescents indicated that their parents never limit the amount of time they can spend on their phones.
At the other end of the spectrum, 7% indicated that their screen time was always limited.
Interestingly, boys’ screen time tends to be limited more frequently than that of girls.
“The degree to which parents are uninvolved or do not regulate the smartphone use of their children surprised me,” Le Roux said.
“I would have expected in the region of 65% to 75% of parents to be fairly proactive in this regard, whereas it seems that only around 40% of parents are active.”
Phones engender a consumptive culture, he noted: “A lot of the original vision around smartphones was that we can use these phones to create videos and so on, but even on social media platforms, by far the largest proportion of users consume, rather than produce, and this is a passive and non-creative way of engaging with the medium.
“It’s not that it is always bad; you might be learning a lot, learning a new language, but there’s a lot of consumption of material that really does not require significant cognitive engagement and is problematic.”
This argument relates to displacement, he said.
“It’s not necessarily that what is being consumed is bad but that it takes one away from what can potentially be good.
“Essentially, hours on the phone displaces time that can be spent on sports or socialisation or some sort of creative work that might have more cognitive benefits in the long run for the adolescent.”
The researchers found almost all adolescents take their phones to school every day (93%) or almost every day (5%) and only 0.6% of the adolescents indicated that they never take a phone to school.
“The main motivation for this is the need to communicate with parents about after-school activities.
“Some schools also rely on mobile apps to share administrative information, making it difficult to implement blanket bans on phone use during school hours,” the authors said.
Le Roux added: “We think an optimal policy, which some schools do implement, is that you have to create some physical separation between the learner and the phone during class so that, if the learner enters class, the phone is placed in a locker.
“During class time, the learner is not able to use the phone due to the physical separation.
“But if the teacher does want to use the phone as a part of a learning activity, the learners can get up, go get their phones and they can use whatever learning app the teacher wants to use.”
While the data indicates many teachers use phones as part of teaching and learning activities, most of them believe phones should only be used in class with the teacher’s permission.
“Not surprisingly, teens are also using tools like ChatGPT and Meta AI to generate essays, orals and artwork for school projects. There can be little doubt that this trend will rapidly spread in the coming years,” the study authors said.
It is critical that the implications for teens’ learning and cognitive development are studied and appropriate guidelines developed for schools and parents. The researchers have shared their findings with the participating schools to this end.
As the study included only former model C schools, the data is not necessarily representative of local teenagers attending schools in under-served and rural communities.
The researchers attempted to include these schools but were unable to secure their participation.
The challenge for parents, educators and policymakers is to strike a balance between harnessing the educational benefits of phones and mitigating their potential negative effects, the authors said, adding that more high-quality, empirical studies are needed to guide policy decisions and interventions.
“When it comes to adults, and you’re working, obviously you have responsibilities and things that require you to spend your attention differently. However, many adults obviously spend their free time — hours and hours — consuming material online,” Le Roux said.
“Particularly among men, gaming is popular and it’s not strange to see men gaming six to seven hours over the weekend. There is high smartphone use among adults. It’s not like we suddenly stop using phones when we grow up.”
