Average Screen Time by Age Statistics 2026: Latest Insights

The global average daily screen time for adults aged 18 and older is 6 hours and 51 minutes, per DataReportal’s Q1 2026 Digital Report. Separately, 50.4% of US teenagers aged 12-17 had 4 or more hours of daily screen time during July 2021 through December 2023, the CDC’s NHIS-Teen survey reported. The gap between life stages is wider than any headline suggests.

This page tracks screen exposure age bracket by age bracket, from infants through adults over 65. For a by-platform view of where those hours go inside social apps, see our sister breakdown of app-level time (linked in the marquee section below).

Key Takeaways

• US teenagers aged 12-17 logged 4 or more hours of daily screen time at a rate of 50.4% between July 2021 and December 2023, the CDC NHIS-Teen survey reported.
• Tweens aged 8-12 averaged 5 hours and 33 minutes per day on screen entertainment, up from 4 hours and 44 minutes in 2019, Common Sense Media reported.
• Children aged 0-8 held steady at about 2.5 hours per day on screens through 2025, even as gaming time surged 65% since 2020, Common Sense Media’s census found.
• UK adults aged 18-24 spent 6 hours and 20 minutes online each day, while those aged 65 and older spent 3 hours and 20 minutes, Ofcom’s 2025 Adults’ Media Use and Attitudes Report documented.
• About 1 in 4 US teenagers aged 12-17 with 4 or more hours of daily screen time reported anxiety symptoms in the past 2 weeks at a rate of 27.1%, and 25.9% reported depression symptoms, the CDC’s Data Brief 513 recorded.
• 40% of US children have a tablet by age 2, more than half (58%) by age 4, and nearly 1 in 4 own a personal cellphone by age 8, Common Sense Media’s 2025 census observed.
• 21% of UK adults aged 65 and older have no internet access at home, per Ofcom’s 2025 Adults’ Media Use and Attitudes Report.

Editor’s Choice

• Global adults aged 18 and older averaged 6 hours and 51 minutes on screens daily, according to DataReportal’s Q1 2026 Digital Report.
• US teens aged 13-18 averaged 8 hours and 39 minutes of media use per day from 2015 to 2021, Common Sense Media reported, excluding screens used at school.
• Nearly all US teens aged 13-17 (96%) report using the internet daily and 95% have access to a smartphone, Pew Research Center’s 2024 survey found.
• Young adults aged 18-24 averaged 8.1 hours of daily screen time globally in DataReportal’s Q1 2026 Digital Report.
• The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends zero screen time for babies younger than 18 months, with video chatting as the only exception.
• About 38% of US teens aged 13-17 say they spend too much time on their smartphone, per Pew Research Center’s 2024 survey.
• Adults aged 25-34 averaged 7.6 hours and adults aged 35-44 averaged 7.1 hours of daily screen use, per DataReportal’s Q1 2026 Digital Report.

Average Screen Time by Age: Full Lifespan Comparison

The lifespan curve climbs steeply from infancy, peaks in young adulthood, and eases in later decades. For app-level patterns layered on top, social media screen time data breaks the same hours down by platform. Headline figures for the lifespan snapshot appear in the table below.

• Infants aged 0-2 in the United States log about 1 hour and 3 minutes on screens per day, per Common Sense Media 2025.
• The 8-12 tween bracket climbs to 5 hours and 33 minutes of daily screen entertainment, per Common Sense Media 2021.
• The 18-24 bracket averages 8.1 hours per day globally, per DataReportal Q1 2026.
• UK adults aged 65 and older bottom out at 3 hours and 20 minutes online per day, per Ofcom 2025.

Source: Common Sense Media 2025 & 2021 censuses; DataReportal Q1 2026 Digital Report; Ofcom 2025 Adults’ Media Use and Attitudes Report – figures use different measurement bases (see Methodology).

By the numbers: The peak of the lifespan curve sits at 8.1 hours per day in the 18-24 global bracket (DataReportal Q1 2026), while UK adults aged 65 and older spend the lowest online time of any bracket at 3 hours and 20 minutes per day (Ofcom 2025). The gap between the two brackets is roughly 5 hours every day.

Screen Time by Age Bracket: Hours Per Day

Charted below, with the headline bullets first.

• The 2-4 toddler bracket averages about 2.13 hours (2 hours 8 minutes) per day, per Common Sense Media 2025.
• The 5-8 young-children bracket averages about 3.47 hours (3 hours 28 minutes) per day, per Common Sense Media 2025.
• The 13-18 teen bracket averages about 8.65 hours (8 hours 39 minutes) of media use per day, per Common Sense Media 2021.
• The 25-34 working-age bracket averages 7.6 hours per day, and the 35-44 bracket averages 7.1 hours, per DataReportal Q1 2026.
• In the 55-64 bracket, DataReportal Q1 2026 recorded 5 hours and 17 minutes for female users and 5 hours and 14 minutes for male users – the lowest screen time the report tracks.

The peak-to-floor spread across the lifespan is about 7 hours per day, comparing the 18-24 global daily figure with the infants aged 0-2 daily figure.

Don’t chase tech news. We track it for you.

One weekly briefing with the launches, AI developments, and breaches that matter. No filler.

Email address

Subscribe Now

Recent Developments

• April 2026: DataReportal published its Q1 2026 Digital Report, reporting that adults globally averaged 6 hours and 51 minutes of daily screen time.
• May 2025: Ofcom released its Adults’ Media Use and Attitudes Report 2025, documenting UK adults averaging four and a half hours online per day, with the 18-24 bracket leading at 6 hours and 20 minutes.
• February 2025: Common Sense Media published its 2025 Common Sense Census: Media Use by Kids Zero to Eight on February 26, 2025, the first comprehensive post-pandemic look at young children’s media habits since the 2020 wave.
• December 2024: Pew Research Center published “Teens, Social Media and Technology 2024,” finding that nearly all US teens (96%) use the internet daily and that about 38% say they spend too much time on their smartphone.
• October 2024: The CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics published Data Brief 513, reporting that 50.4% of US teens aged 12-17 had 4 or more hours of daily screen time between July 2021 and December 2023.
• March 2022: Common Sense Media released its 2021 Census on Media Use by Tweens and Teens, showing daily screen use jumped to 5:33 from 4:44 among tweens and to 8:39 from 7:22 among teens between 2019 and 2021.

Children Under 2: Screen Time Patterns

• The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that babies younger than 18 months get no screen time at all, with video chatting with family members as the only exception.
• Toddlers 18 months to 24 months old can start to enjoy some screen time with a parent or caregiver, limited to watching educational programming, per AAP guidance.
• Common Sense Media’s 2025 census reported that infants aged 0-2 in the United States average 1 hour and 3 minutes on screens per day.
• 40% of US children have their own tablet by age 2, and more than half (58%) have their own tablet by age 4, per Common Sense Media’s 2025 census.
• The AAP notes that children younger than 2 have a hard time understanding what they are viewing on screens unless it is explained by an adult, reinforcing its co-viewing recommendation.

Broader screen entertainment exposure at this age layers on top of parents’ own device use.

Toddlers and Preschoolers (Ages 2-5)

• Children aged 2-4 spend an average of 2 hours and 8 minutes on screens per day, per Common Sense Media’s 2025 census.
• The 5-8 age band averages 3 hours and 28 minutes per day on screens, the same census reported.
• Total screen use among US kids aged 0-8 has held steady at about 2.5 hours per day since the 2020 census wave, Common Sense Media found.
• The gaming time among US children aged 0-8 has surged 65% since 2020, per Common Sense Media’s 2025 census.
• 62% of US parents watch YouTube occasionally alongside their young children, but only 17% co-view TikTok content, the same census recorded.
• 1 in 5 US families now use a mobile device to help manage their child’s bedtime routines, mealtimes, and emotional regulation, per Common Sense Media 2025.

Tweens (Ages 8-12): The Steep Climb

• Tweens aged 8-12 use screens for entertainment for a total of about 5 hours and 33 minutes per day, up from 4 hours and 44 minutes in 2019, per Common Sense Media’s 2021 census.
• The 2019-to-2021 rise represented a 17% increase in daily media use among tweens, attributable to pandemic-era changes in schooling and social patterns.
• Nearly 1 in 4 US children own a personal cellphone by age 8, per Common Sense Media’s 2025 census.
• The tween 5 hours and 33 minutes figure excludes screens used at school, per Common Sense Media.

For an age band whose homework increasingly runs on tablets and Chromebooks, the “off-school” number is a floor, not a ceiling.

Teenagers (Ages 12-17): The High-Use Years

• Among US teenagers aged 12-17 during July 2021 through December 2023, 50.4% had 4 or more hours of daily screen time, 22.8% had 3 hours, 17.8% had 2 hours, 6.1% had 1 hour, and 3.0% had less than 1 hour, per CDC NHIS-Teen.
• The percentage of teenagers with 4 or more hours of daily screen time varied by age and by race and Hispanic origin, per the same CDC brief.
• US teens aged 13-18 averaged 8 hours and 39 minutes of daily media use from 2015 to 2021, Common Sense Media reported, excluding school screens.
• Nearly all US teens aged 13-17 (96%) report using the internet daily and 95% have access to a smartphone, per Pew Research Center’s 2024 survey conducted Sept. 18 – Oct. 10, 2024.
• Nearly three-in-four US teens aged 13-17 (73%) go on YouTube daily, making YouTube the most widely used and visited platform, and about six-in-ten visit TikTok daily, per Pew.
• Nearly half of US teens say they are online almost constantly, with about half or more of Hispanic (58%) and Black (53%) teens reporting near-constant internet use, Pew found.
• About 38% of US teens aged 13-17 say they spend too much time on their smartphone, per Pew Research Center’s 2024 survey.

Young Adults (Ages 18-24): The Peak Cohort

• Young adults aged 18-24 average 8.1 hours of daily screen time globally, per DataReportal’s Q1 2026 Digital Report.
• UK adults aged 18-24 spend the most time online at 6 hours and 20 minutes per day, per Ofcom’s 2025 Adults’ Media Use and Attitudes Report.
• Most UK adults’ online time is spent on a smartphone, where they use an average of 41 apps a month, Ofcom recorded, and readers who want a device-level view can compare our smartphone usage data.
• Female internet users aged 16-24 and male users aged 25-34 spend the most time on screen, per DataReportal Q1 2026.
• Gen Z, aged 13 to 28, spends over 9 hours every day on screens, the most of any generation DataReportal tracks.

Working-Age Adults (Ages 25-44)

• Adults aged 25-34 average 7.6 hours of daily screen use globally, per DataReportal’s Q1 2026 Digital Report.
• Adults aged 35-44 average 7.1 hours of daily screen use, per the same DataReportal report.
• Male internet users aged 25-34 are among the highest screen-time cohort DataReportal tracks in Q1 2026.

This band pairs heavy work-device use with leisure use on TikTok and Instagram; the daily figure captures both.

Mid-Life Adults (Ages 45-64)

• Female internet users aged 55-64 spend 5 hours and 17 minutes on screens per day, and male users in the same bracket spend 5 hours and 14 minutes, the lowest bracket DataReportal tracks in its Q1 2026 report.
• Ofcom’s 2025 Adults’ Media Use and Attitudes Report puts UK adults’ overall online time at four and a half hours per day, an increase from the previous year.

The 45-54 bracket is not a discrete row in DataReportal Q1 2026; treat mid-life estimates as an interpolation. Longer-form viewing on Netflix viewer data picks up as smartphone dominance eases.

Source: DataReportal Q1 2026 Digital Report.

Seniors (Ages 65+): The Lowest-Use Bracket

• UK adults aged 65 and older spend 3 hours and 20 minutes online each day, the lowest UK figure tracked, per Ofcom’s 2025 Adults’ Media Use and Attitudes Report.
• 21% of UK adults aged 65 and older have no internet access at home, per Ofcom 2025.
• Older adults aged 65 and above average about 5.2 hours on screens globally per day, per DataReportal’s Q1 2026 Digital Report.

The gap between the two figures is largely television – for older cohorts, “screen time” is still mostly TV time.

Source: Ofcom 2025 Adults’ Media Use and Attitudes Report; DataReportal Q1 2026 Digital Report.

Mental Health Correlations Across Age Brackets

• About 1 in 4 US teenagers aged 12-17 with 4 or more hours of daily screen time reported anxiety symptoms in the past 2 weeks at a rate of 27.1%, per CDC NCHS Data Brief 513.
• 25.9% of US teens aged 12-17 in the same high-screen bracket reported depression symptoms in the past 2 weeks, per the same CDC Data Brief.
• The CDC found that teenagers living in metropolitan areas were more likely to have 4 or more hours of daily screen time than teenagers living in nonmetropolitan areas.
• About 38% of US teens aged 13-17 say they spend too much time on their smartphone, per Pew Research Center’s 2024 survey.

Our coverage of attention span statistics tracks the flip side: shorter engagement windows co-occur with the same high-screen bracket.

Key finding: About 1 in 4 US teens aged 12-17 with 4 or more hours of daily screen time reported anxiety symptoms in the past 2 weeks at a rate of 27.1%, and 25.9% reported depression symptoms – per CDC NCHS Data Brief 513. The pattern held across demographic subgroups, per CDC.

Device Ownership by Age Group

• 40% of US children own a tablet by age 2 and more than half (58%) by age 4, per Common Sense Media’s 2025 census.
• Nearly 1 in 4 US children own a personal cellphone by age 8, the same census reported.
• 95% of US teens aged 13-17 have access to a smartphone, 88% have a desktop or laptop computer, 83% have a gaming console, and 70% have a tablet computer, per Pew Research Center’s 2024 survey.
• 21% of UK adults aged 65 and older have no internet access at home, per Ofcom’s 2025 Adults’ Media Use and Attitudes Report, and readers who want a device-level view can also compare our iPhone statistics.

Source: Common Sense Media 2025 Census; Pew Research Center 2024; Ofcom 2025.

US vs UK Screen Time by Age

• UK adults averaged four and a half hours online per day in 2025, per Ofcom’s Adults’ Media Use and Attitudes Report.
• DataReportal’s Q1 2026 report puts the global adult daily screen time at 6 hours and 51 minutes across all devices.
• UK adults aged 18-24 record 6 hours and 20 minutes online per day, per Ofcom 2025.
• The 18-24 global figure of 8.1 hours per day of screen time comes from DataReportal Q1 2026.
• UK adults aged 65 and older log 3 hours and 20 minutes online per day, per Ofcom 2025, while DataReportal Q1 2026 reports about 5.2 hours of screen time daily in the same age bracket globally.

The UK and global figures are not head-to-head comparable without care (see Methodology). The definitional gap between “online time” and “all-device screen time” accounts for a large share of the raw delta.

Source: Ofcom 2025 Adults’ Media Use and Attitudes Report; DataReportal Q1 2026 Digital Report.

Methodology

Every figure traces to a named primary source: CDC NCHS Data Brief 513, Ofcom 2025, Common Sense Media 2025 and 2021, Pew Research 2024, AAP, and DataReportal Q1 2026. Each uses a different measurement base: Ofcom “time online,” DataReportal “all-device screen time” including TV, Common Sense Media “media use” excluding school screens, CDC “screen time” in whole-hour self-report buckets. Figures should not be summed across sources without adjusting for these definitional differences.

How is average screen time by age measured differently across sources?

Ofcom’s 2025 Adults’ Media Use and Attitudes Report measures UK adults’ “time spent online” and puts the daily figure at four and a half hours across all adults, rising to 6 hours and 20 minutes in the 18-24 bracket.

DataReportal’s Q1 2026 Digital Report measures “screen time” and puts the global adult daily average at 6 hours and 51 minutes.

The CDC’s NCHS Data Brief 513 reports that 50.4% of US teenagers aged 12-17 had 4 or more hours of daily screen time between July 2021 and December 2023.

Which age group has the highest daily screen time?

Young adults aged 18-24 average 8.1 hours of daily screen time globally in DataReportal’s Q1 2026 Digital Report, while Gen Z as a whole (aged 13-28) averages over 9 hours per day, the most of any generation the report tracks. In Common Sense Media’s teen census, US teenagers aged 13-18 averaged 8 hours and 39 minutes of daily media use from 2015 to 2021, excluding screens used at school.

Does screen time really correlate with teen mental health?

CDC NCHS Data Brief 513 reported that about 1 in 4 US teenagers aged 12-17 with 4 or more hours of daily screen time experienced anxiety symptoms in the past 2 weeks (27.1%) and 25.9% reported depression symptoms. Data Brief 513 draws from the CDC’s NHIS-Teen survey covering July 2021 through December 2023, reporting the rate of anxiety and depression symptoms teens experienced in the past 2 weeks. About 38% of US teens aged 13-17 self-report they spend too much time on their smartphone, per Pew Research Center’s 2024 survey.

Conclusion

Infants under 2 log about 1 hour and 3 minutes per day, per Common Sense Media 2025, while the daily average reaches 8.1 hours in the 18-24 global cohort per DataReportal Q1 2026. UK seniors aged 65 and older bring the online figure back down to 3 hours and 20 minutes per day, per Ofcom 2025. CDC NCHS Data Brief 513 recorded 27.1% anxiety symptoms and 25.9% depression symptoms in the past 2 weeks among 12-17s with 4-plus daily screen hours.

Toddler-to-tween transitions are where guidance and observed behavior diverge fastest, teen brackets are where the mental-health signal sits, young-adult brackets are where the daily peak lives, and older brackets are where the digital-access gap widens.