Teenagers shun homework for social media and video games
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Teenagers are far more likely to spend their time on social media and gaming after school than they are to be doing homework, according to a new UCL-led study.
Around 3,500 UK teenagers, whose lives have been closely followed from birth by the Millennium Cohort Study, were asked to keep a detailed time use diary for one weekday and one weekend day. The data, which the teens recorded either via a smartphone app or online, has shed new light on how young people spend their time.
Around half of the teens surveyed reported spending some time on social media on a weekday. This proportion was considerably higher for girls at six in ten (61%), compared to 39% among boys. One in ten teenagers who reported being on social media had spent upwards of three hours a day online, though the average time spent was one hour 21 minutes per day.
For boys, gaming was an even more popular pastime than social media; almost half (48%) of all boys had spent time on video games, and of these, 12% reported s...
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