Parents may be shocked to learn that the average child receives nearly 5,000 alerts on their smartphone every day.
This huge number was discovered in a study that tracked the smartphone use of 11- to 17-year-olds for a week. This showed that on a normal day, participants received 237 notifications.
But the report found that frequency varied, with highs of more than 4,500 delivered and more than 1,200 seen.
The pings came mainly from social media apps, with Snapchat, Discord and Instagram topping the list.
About a quarter of these never-ending alerts appear during school hours, and about five percent more between midnight and 5 a.m. on school nights.
Adolescents and teens with cell phones are plagued by incessant distraction from their devices, according to new research, with most of the hundreds and sometimes thousands of ‘pings’ coming from social media, YouTube and gaming apps
These young people have sometimes had to deal with what the study authors at Common Sense Media called “constant buzzing.”
‘What are the long-term consequences?’ asked a concerned psychiatrist who independently reviewed the group’s new report. “I don’t think we know.”
But despite and because of that uncertainty, the psychiatrist said he was “immensely concerned” by the report’s new findings.
The overwhelming pace of a mobile device’s “highly stimulating environment” can negatively impact an adolescent’s “cognitive ability, attention span and memory at a time when their brain is still developing,” psychiatrist Dr. Benjamin Maxwell. NBC News.
Dr. Maxwell, the interim director of child and adolescent psychiatry at Rady Children’s Hospital in San Diego, was not involved in the new study.
But his concerns were echoed by Jim Steyer, the founder and CEO of Common Sense Media, who published the report on Tuesday after conducting research and surveys among more than 200 young people between the ages of 11 and 18.
“They literally wake up and before they go to the bathroom, they’re on their phone,” said Steyer, whose nonprofit organization Common Sense focuses on the impact of media and technology on children and their families.
Steyer’s group signed up 203 teens and adolescents from across the United States who, with parental consent, agreed to join the nonprofit each from ages 11 to 17 year olds’ smartphone use for one week.
The researchers used, among other things, the Chronicle app, which runs silently in the background and records information about which apps are used by the device owner and when, how often the phone is picked up and how many notifications are sent.
But the work was limited to Android users only, due to the fact that Apple’s device tracking specs prevent researchers from accessing “the names of specific non-Apple apps that young people often use (e.g. social media apps, mobile games),” their report said.
Fortunately for the majority of teens in that 203-person sample, those hundreds of pings and alerts didn’t necessarily translate into constant use at the same rate.
The data also showed that half of the young people tracked picked up their phones at least 51 times a day, while some picked up their devices just two or as many as 498 times a day.
The younger participants, aged 11 to 12, were less likely to constantly check their phones, which fits with their social lives and their parents’ restrictions.
On the other hand, adolescents and teens were much more likely to check their phones more than 100 times in one day.
After collecting that data, the nonprofit’s researchers then discussed those results with a 15-member group of teenagers between the ages of 14 and 18, spanning a wide range of races, ethnicities and genders, to better explore their findings. contextualize.
For most of the 203 teens studied, those hundreds of warnings didn’t necessarily translate into consistent use at the same rate. Half of young people picked up their phone at least 51 times a day, while some picked up their device just two or as many as 498 times a day
After collecting that data (above), the researchers then discussed those results with a 15-member group of teenagers ranging in age from 14 to 18 years old, spanning a wide range of races, ethnicities, and genders, to better explain their findings. contextualize.
While this ‘2023 Common Sense Youth Advisory Council’ worked closely with the researchers of January to May from In 2023, their own cell phones were not tracked for the study.
“I think if you’re an active user of your phone, you get so many notifications from different platforms that you don’t even use,” said an 11th grade advisory board member.
“They’re not even just for communication,” the teen said. “You get so many that you become overwhelmed if you don’t curate.”
Some shared their own strategies for gaining a little peace of mind themselves.
“I always leave my phone on ‘do not disturb’ at night so I’m not tempted to keep using my phone,” said another advisory board member, a 9th grader, “but I do also not. keep it in my bedroom.”
In addition to developing good habits, the researchers also wanted to point out the scope for misleading data in tracking.
Many of the young people in their study group tended to leave ‘passive’ content on their phones, such as music, background TV or movies, while doing homework or chores such as laundry.
“While (some teens) spent an average of more than 16 hours per day,” the Common Sense Media team reported, “adolescents” smartphone use doesn’t always match adults’ narrative about “teens always staring at their screens.”