Vast Majority of Youth Exceed Daily ‘Screen Time’ Recommendations: Government Report

A teenager looks at the screen of a mobile phone in a file photo. Leon Neal/Getty Images

The amount of time the vast majority of youth are spending on the internet far exceeds the daily recommended “screen time,” according to a new federal report.

The vast majority (89 to 96 percent) of youth in grades 6 to 10 exceed the recommended daily screen time of two hours, according to a report published by the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) on July 23, which was first reported by Blacklock’s Reporter.

The PHAC report provided findings from the 2022 Health Behaviour in School-Aged Children (HBSC) study, which indicated that 42 percent of boys and 54 percent of girls in grades 6 to 8 reported having online contact with close friend(s) “almost all the time throughout the day.” Meanwhile, 57 percent of boys and 73 percent of girls in grades 9 and 10 reported the same.

Comparatively, around 52 percent of youth said they participate in team sports, around 20 percent said they are involved in church or other religious groups, and around 8 percent said they take part in community groups such as Scouts, Girl Guides, or cadets.

“Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, youth were spending increased amounts of time on digital media including social media, video games, TV, and virtual learning,” the PHAC report says. “Higher levels of usage have been associated with higher levels of depression, anxiety, inattention, irritability, and hyperactivity.”

The public health agency says some reports indicate that nearly 100 percent of adolescents have used the internet in the last three months and 92 percent regularly use social media, as frequent internet use has become “especially common in Canadian society.”

During the COVID-19 pandemic, “facility closures, social distancing policies, and quarantine measures all invoked a loss of social connections,” the PHAC report says

“For many young people the majority of hours spent at home resulted in decreased physical activity and increased screen time,” the report says, adding that the pandemic also influenced the school environment for youth as online learning and virtual classrooms were implemented.

The HBSC study used a questionnaire to collect data from students in grades 6 to 10 during the 2021–22 and 2022–23 school years in nine provinces and two territories, excluding New Brunswick and Nunavut.

Pandemic Impacts

In a 2021 report, the public health agency said that lockdowns “significantly altered Canadian families’ daily life,” as disruptions in activities, school, and employment have had a wide range of impacts.

“About 9 in 10 parents reported their children engaged in screen time on a daily basis,” the report said.

It also indicated that the majority of parents said they were “very” or “extremely” concerned about their children’s amount of screen time. The percentage is higher (73.2 percent) among parents with children who have cognitive, behavioural, or emotional disabilities compared to parents with children who have no disabilities (61.7 percent).

Moreover, half of parents with children who have cognitive, behavioural, or emotional disabilities said their children engaged in physical activity daily, while half reported that they were “very” or “extremely” concerned about the amount of physical activity their children participated in.

For both groups of parents, more than 70 percent said they were “very” or “extremely” concerned about their children’s opportunities to socialize with friends as a result of the pandemic, and more than 50 percent said they were “very” or “extremely” concerned about their children’s loneliness or isolation.

Unplugged

More than 3,730 parents in Canada have signed a pledge to commit to delaying smartphone access for their children until the age of 14 in an effort to protect their children’s mental health from the cognitive, social, and emotional risks associated with excessive screen time. Additionally, 674 schools have signed the pledge as of Aug. 24.

The pledge was created by Unplugged Canada, a volunteer-run organization based in Vancouver that seeks to “educate parents about the risks of early smartphone use and inspire a collective commitment to restore childhood.” The organization is focused on protecting children’s mental health.

The organization also has a “Call to Action” campaign, signed by more than 1,000 people, which calls on the federal government to prioritize the protection of children’s mental health by raising the age of social media access to 16 and requiring strong age verification to access social media platforms and explicit content.

The campaign aims to push for a change in legislation and calls on the government to “expand public education awareness on the impacts of smartphones, social media, and digital addiction in schools and communities.”

Schools across Canada have been implementing restrictions on smartphone use in classrooms over the last few years, starting with Ontario and Quebec. Ontario has had cellphone restrictions since 2019 but announced tightened compliance measures in April 2024. Quebec forbade cellphone use in classrooms effective Dec. 31, 2023, the second province in the country to implement such a measure.