British kids spend obsessive amount of time on TikTok, new study finds

A new report has claimed British children on average spend over two hours on TikTok per day - among the highest users of the social media platform in the world.

Last year, British youngsters between the ages of four and 18 spent 127 minutes on the video-based app on average, that's an 11 per cent increase compared to the previous year, according to parental controls company Qustodio which gathered anonymous data from 400,000 smartphone users globally.

This number was higher than there average spend time for children worldwide which stands at 112 minutes per day using the app.

In the last four years, the average watch time on TikTok has doubled since back in 2020, children spent 70 minutes every day on TikTok.

Out of the children who participated in the study, around half said that they use TikTok.

A child playing on a smartphone.iStockphoto by Getty Images

However, TikTok has an age restriction similar to other social media such as Facebook whereby users aren't allowed on the app unless they are over the age of 13.

The app also has a time limit set at 60 minutes for children's accounts, but this warning can be ignored.

When it comes to video games Roblox - the game that enables you to build virtual worlds - was also popular among the British under-18s who spent 125 minutes each day on average.

At 95 minutes a day on average, Snapchat is the go-to message app for kids, while Instagram followed behind with an average of 40 minutes, and just 15 minutes were spent on Facebook.

While, children spent just over an hour on YouTube (66 minutes) each day on average.

All in all, the amount of time children spend on phones, tablets, games or computers outside of school hours remained unchanged from last year with an average of four hours per day.

Eduardo Cruz, chief executive of Qustodio - a company that provides parent control features and screen time tracking - noted how parents, teachers and children need to converse on what they can do to "strike a healthy digital balance," when it comes to social media usage, while also keeping youth "safe from online harm," The Telegraph reported.

Children on social media is a widely discussed matter, with concerns over what kind of content they are being exposed to

The UK government has even considered a crackdown recently on under-16s using social media platforms unless they have parental permission.

Parents currently can limit their children's screen time if they have an iPhone or Android and if they are linked to their children's devices.

Meanwhile, a study of nearly 12,000 children in the United States was published in November last year by the Oxford Internet Institute, where no evidence was found to show that screen time impacted their brain function or well-being

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