Those born after the year 2000 will be remembered as the TikTok generation.
After the outbreak of the pandemic, the use of the social network of the moment has skyrocketed and for the second consecutive year it is the social network in which young people, children from 4 years old to adolescents of 18 years old, spend more time a day .
Total, 1 hour and 47 minutes consuming random short videos of dances, recipes and anything you can imagine. TikTok is addictive, and not just for kids.
The time used on video platforms, including TikTok, YouTube or Netflix, grew by 18% compared to the previous year, according to a recent study by Qustodio, a software company specialized in measuring time on entertainment platforms and controlling parenting on social media.
Young people spend 4 hours a day in front of a screen. And although TikTok is the queen, YouTube is the one that has grown the most in terms of use, with an increase of 20%. Today children are connected for an average of 1 hour a day on this platform.
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On the other hand, and far from being alarmist, these figures may seem normal when one thinks that little by little these social networks are replacing traditional television, which has been suffering a decline in the number of viewers for several months, and Today it is common for parents to plug Peppa Pig or Pocoyo to their children on YouTube.
The channels of these programs on the video platform have tens of millions of followers, in addition to their videos accumulating millions of views.
The situation in Spain
In Spain, specifically, TikTok is the most used social network among young people, followed by Instagram, Facebook and Snapchat, in that order, according to Qustodio. AND the average daily use of social networks is 55 minutesin line with the global average or the United States, and only below the United Kingdom.
An app that has gained enormous popularity in the last half of 2022 is BeReal, which does not appear in this report and for which there is hardly any data, but which is closely watched by its competitors such as Instagram or TikTok itself and has even reached to copy it.
Regarding video platforms in our country, YouTube is the most used, followed by Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Twitch. The latter is present in the top 5 of the rest of the countries that appear in this report, such as the US or Australia, but it is in Spain where it is especially popular, according to Qustodio data.
On average, children between the ages of 4 and adolescents aged 18 spend half an hour in Spain connected to these video platforms. Well below the global average (45 minutes) and the rest of the countries in the report, such as the United Kingdom, which adds more than 60 minutes.
One of the conclusions drawn by the experts from this study is that usage time is not everything. Children spend a lot of time online, more and more in fact, but they use these platforms for many purposes, from maintaining relationships with their friends to learning.
“Everyone loves having access to connections, content and information at their fingertips. But with that great power comes risk, and the exhaustion of being ‘always connected’,” they conclude.
“In the coming years, the struggle is to recover a better balance”, they add.
You can read the full Qustodio report in English here.
