Screen Time Is Out of Control

Teens and Millennials can’t keep their hands off their smartphones

• Daily smartphone screen use is skyrocketing among Gen Z teens and young adults.
• The most common smartphone use is for connecting with others.
• Pilot studies using strategies to reduce smartphone use did not produce significant changes.

Statistically, across eight years, Millennials demonstrated significant decreases in emailing, Facebook friends, and media sharing. In contrast, Millennials showed increases in smartphone usage, social media usage, texting, and anxiety about not being about to access one’s smartphone. These changes are important in viewing trends in technology usage and indicate that Millennials were moving away from “old” tech and toward new screen uses. in addition, the study also shows that anxiety about smartphone usage increased over the eight years.This is concerning and concurs with the data from the National Institute of Mental Health showing that 31.9% of adolescents had an anxiety disorder (https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/any-anxiety-disorder)Source: Larry RosenThe next slide shows average Millennial usage of nine of the items on the MTUAS (partial MTUAS scale is at the bottom of the slide). 

The blue lines reflect usage from 2013 to 2017 combined, while the orange lines show the data from 2020. Texting and smartphone use were the most common technologies used by Millennials, followed by internet searching, emailing, and telephone calling. Interestingly, social media usage was averaging only about once a week. Given that the social media score computed the average usage (frequency of checking in) of 11 social media sites, that is not surprising, as Millennials most often have their preferred social media site and actively use several others at least once a week while not using others at all. 

This slide shows usage of the various social media sites from 2013 to 2020 where the average number of "active" social media sites (at least once a week) rose from two to seven in just eight years. In 2020 the most popular sites were Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube, and Facebook.

This slide depicts a series of studies from 2016 to 2020 in which participants installed an app that monitored daily smartphone use, counting number of times they “unlocked” their phone per day and the amount of time the phone was open during the day. 

The studies included both Millennials and teens. This slide shows the daily smartphone minutes for Millennials between 2016 and 2019 as well as the data from high school seniors from 2018 to 2020. For Millennials, there appeared to be a large shift from spending more time on the phone, from about 220 minutes per day to about 260 minutes a day. High school seniors logged the same roughly 270 minutes across the three years from 2018 to 2020.

NOTE: The apps used to monitor daily smartphone minutes and unlocks had some issues— particularly the iPhone app—where data were clearly wrong and showed numbers that were not realistic. Using specific cutoffs, those “iffy” data were removed. Despite those irregularities in the absolute data, the relative data trends should be seen as accurate.

This slide shows the daily smartphone unlocks for Millennials between 2016 and 2019 as well as the data from high school seniors from 2018 to 2020. For Millennials, there appeared to be a large shift in opening the phone, from about 50 times a day to about 70 times a day. High school seniors logged the same 70 unlocks across the three years from 2018 to 2020. If you assume eight hours of sleep, that leaves 16 hours for 70 unlocks each day. Divide 70 unlocks by 16 hours per day and you get 4.4 unlocks per hour, or one unlock approximately every 15 minutes.

This slide shows the result of one study with teens in which the daily smartphone minutes and unlocks were correlated with other target variables indicating that more unlocks and minutes were related to decreased psychological state, more social media use, and more distractibility.Source: Larry RosenThis slide depicts a study of millennials in which participants were asked to take screenshots of their weekly Screen Time data on iPhones or Digital Well-Being data on Android phones (for course extra credit). Both provided a wealth of daily smartphone data.

The study took place just prior to pandemic home sheltering, so the first two weeks reflected normal campus course attendance while the last six weeks reflected off-campus course attendance. This slide depicts the data across the eight optional weeks to submit screenshots. As is evident, the sample sizes varied from 28 to 53, with more students providing data during the last three weeks (obviously realizing that they needed that extra credit!). The dark vertical line separates the pre-pandemic in-person course time and the pandemic online course time. Hours per day show an increase from the 270 minutes (4.5 hours per day) in the earlier study to seven hours per day in this study. Quite frankly, I don’t think that this depicts a major change but rather a change from a study using somewhat “iffy” apps.The data also indicate that social media apps engage users for roughly three hours per day, followed by entertainment apps that account for about an hour and a half a day.

The next slide shows that Millennials are picking up (unlocking) their phones more than 100 times a day, which is about every 17 minutes, or four times per hour. Strikingly, Millennials demonstrated that they received more than 150 notifications a day, meaning that their phone buzzed, beeped, or played a tune once every 2.5 minutes!Source: Larry RosenScreen Time and Digital Well-Being provide a wealth of information. This pie chart shows that the most-used apps, in terms of minutes per day, are nearly all “connection” apps whereby the user connects with others.Source: Larry RosenThe next pie chart shows the same trend when considering where the user taps after unlocking the phone. iMessage is most often the first app to be opened, as also seen in the third pie chart, it is responsible for more than half of the notifications.Two of the studies examined a mediated model to predict academic performance in an upper-division general education course. Three variables were considered as possible independent psychological variables while four technology-related variables were considered as mediators.

Read the full article here: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/rewired-the-psychology-of-technology/202301/screen-time-is-out-of-control