Smartphones are a constant force in teens' lives. Young people rely on their smartphones for support, relaxation, and distraction—at home and at school, day and night.
The draw of smartphones is complex and powerful: Notifications buzz constantly, and apps like TikTok serve up personalized and often irresistible content. Along with the upsides of staying connected, smartphones have become an always-on, sometimes disruptive element in the lives of young people. What hasn't been as widely studied is what kids think and feel about their smartphones and how they are designed. We decided to go right to the source.
Our new report, "Constant Companion: A Week in the Life of a Young Person's Smartphone Use," sheds light on when and how teens are using their smartphones in many different ways around the clock. We looked at data on app use collected from a voluntary sample of young people's phones, and then asked members of Common Sense's Youth Advisory Council to share their reactions to the findings, bringing their personal experience and unique point of view into the conversation.
We learned that adolescents experience their smartphones as a lot of fun, but a lot of work as well. The business model of these devices and apps hinges upon young people engaging with them as much as possible, which can feel distracting and overwhelming. But over time, adolescents report that they have grown savvier about the ways in which their phones try to draw them in, and they're taking steps to set boundaries.
Teens want us to know that smartphone design affects their focus, their school days, and their sleep.
Here are three insights we heard from teens, along with recommendations from our report that device and app makers should consider as they design for younger users. The right changes would give teens and tweens more agency to protect their attention levels at school, the quality of their sleep, and their overall well-being.
Quieting the noise of irrelevant notifications
"For me, even throughout the day, I keep 'do not disturb' on, not even because I wanna not respond to people or anything like that. I like being able to not have my phone buzzing, but being able to click on ... For me, I like the extra step because then it's like me having to do more work to be on my phone, and I don't know, I feel like it's a little strategy for me."
—11th grader
Teens are bombarded by smartphone notifications, and they build their own defenses to screen more of them out. On a typical day, the kids' phones we tracked received a median of 237 notifications, and most picked up their phones 72 times a day or more. But young people are getting savvier about blocking some of the notifications that they feel are frivolous or silly—and they prefer notifications for more personal things like DMs and content directly related to their friends.
Interestingly, our youth advisors described ways of adding friction to their phones to try to use them more intentionally.
Feeling pulled to phones amid inconsistent school policies
"For my school, we do have a phone policy and we're not technically allowed to have it out during class, but a lot of people do in spite of that. And definitely, I think if you track kids at my school, their phone usage, you would definitely see them checking their phones, and then checking Snapchat during class."
—10th grader
Sanctioned or not, teens are using their smartphones in school for social connection and entertainment. How much depends on school rules, how often staff enforces those rules, and how stressed or bored a teen feels at school. Members of the youth council stated that at their schools, policies varied from classroom to classroom, ranging from no policy at all (making it easy to sneak a peek at notifications), to putting phones in bags at the front of a classroom.
Our smartphone tracking found that during school hours, almost all (97%) of the participants used their phones at least once. At the high end, kids were engaging with their phones as much as six and a half hours during the school day. Social media, YouTube, and gaming are the most common smartphone activities at school—likely used for bite-size entertainment, connection, or disengaging from a stressful school day.
When end-of-day chill time displaces sleep
"... for certain apps, like TikTok, it's really hard to fall asleep once you use it close to when you're gonna go to sleep. I can't use it within an hour, or else I'd struggle … and then I'll just get back on the app 'cause I'm not sleeping anyway."
—10th grader
From using music platforms or YouTube to play music, or watching videos to calm down, some teens' phones run almost all night long. Many of the smartphones we tracked were being used late into the night, eating into valuable sleep hours. Over two-thirds of the 11- to 17-year-olds we surveyed said they "sometimes" or "often" miss sleep due to being on their phone or the internet late at night.
The youth council members we spoke with noted that sometimes their days are so busy that they only get to relax with their phone at bedtime, but this leads to going to bed later. For this reason, some reported that their best solution was keeping their phone out of their room at night.
Industry needs to offer young people better options for managing their smartphones.
Young users would be great partners in developing new designs that would give them a greater sense of agency and intentionality in how they use their phones. Without restricting young people's opportunities to find helpful and fun content through their phones, device and app design could improve the experience that kids have with these constant companions:
Young people have a continual and nuanced relationship with their smartphones. While they don't want to be separated from them, teens wish that phones and apps were designed in a different way. Tech providers that embrace youth-centered design—in other words, recognizing that children and teens have unique needs, rather than forcing kids to work to achieve balance with these computers in their pockets—will better serve teens, as well as the caregivers and teachers supporting them, and ultimately will be more trusted and sought by consumers.
Methodology: We enrolled 203 11- to 17-year-olds in the United States to let us track their smartphone use for one week by installing Chronicle, a study app. This app runs unobtrusively in the background and provides continuous data about which apps were used and when, how many pickups and notifications occurred, and how often smartphones were used during the school day and overnight hours. The study was conducted with Android phone users only, because Apple device tracking does not share with the research community the names of specific non-Apple apps that young people commonly use (e.g., social media apps, mobile games). After analyzing results, we reviewed them with 15 members of the 2023 Common Sense Youth Advisory Council, a group of 14- to 18-year-olds of various races/ethnicities and genders who live in communities across the United States. These youth advisors worked with Common Sense from January to May 2023, but their phones were not tracked as part of the study.
The report featured in this article was co-authored by Heidi M. Weeks, Alexandria Schaller, Michael Robb, Supreet Mann, and Amanda Lenhart.
Dr. Radesky is the David G. Dickinson Collegiate Professor of Pediatrics and Associate Professor of Pediatrics, and Division Director of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics, at University of Michigan Medical School. She runs the Radesky Lab's research focusing on interactive and mobile media use, the parent-child relationship, and child social-emotional outcomes. She is the chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics Council on Communications and Media, and authored AAP policy statements Media and Young Minds (2016) and Digital Advertising to Children (2020). She is now co-Medical Director of the AAP Center of Excellence on Social Media and Youth Mental Health, which provides guidance to families about healthy media use.
