THE QUSTODIO ANNUAL DATA REPORT 2022
From Alpha to Z: raising the digital generations
How are our new digital natives shaping technology habits? How are families adapting to an ever-changing world?
In this report
4. ONLINE VIDEO
5. SOCIAL MEDIA
6. GAMING
7. EDUCATION
8. COMMUNICATION
9. KEY INSIGHTS
10. CONCLUSIONS
In this report
1. ABOUT
2. METHODOLOGY
3. FAMILIES AND TECHNOLOGY IN 2022
3. TECHNOLOGY IN THE CLASSROOM
4. ONLINE VIDEO
5. SOCIAL MEDIA
6. GAMING
7. EDUCATION
8. COMMUNICATION
9. KEY INSIGHTS
10. CONCLUSIONS
ABOUT THIS REPORT
The landscape of the digital world is ever-changing, and always exciting. Four years ago, we decided to investigate how young people were using technology, exploring the apps they used to gain insight into daily habits, emerging trends, and ongoing interests.
This report details children’s app use across 2022, while also comparing kids’ most-loved applications over a three-year period, from 2020 to present. Following in the footsteps of our 2021 and 2020 reports, we have investigated children’s app use globally and in specific major markets: the United States, United Kingdom, and Spain. For 2022, we have also expanded our research to include app habits and family attitudes of children and parents in Australia.
This ongoing comparison provides insight into the trends shaping future generations. Our report also includes findings on parents’ and guardians’ views regarding how technology fits into their daily lives. It reveals how families monitor and understand their children’s tech use, and adapt to an increasingly digital upbringing, from the classroom to the couch.
In order to provide a historical view of children’s technology use across the years, we have included a data annex, showcasing collective insights from all yearly Qustodio reports, starting in 2019. In the annex, we detail the time spent on online video, social media, gaming, education, and communication apps year over year, kids’ most popular apps within each category and the time they spent on them, and parents’ most blocked apps. This annex will continue to be updated on a yearly basis to highlight changing digital trends as time progresses.
ABOUT QUSTODIO
Methodology
From Alpha to Z: raising the digital generations is based on anonymous information provided from over 400,000 families with children aged 4-18 from around the world, along with individual market trends across the United States, the United Kingdom, Spain and Australia. It reveals children’s online app habits on mobile devices and desktop devices, from January 1, 2022, to December 31, 2022, compared with information from the same period across 2021 and 2020, and from 2019 onwards in our data annex.
In order to better understand how families view and manage technology in their daily lives, we surveyed 1,617 parents across these markets. The parents surveyed were between the ages of 25 and 65, and had at least one child between the ages of 5 and 15 living in their household.
In addition, our report includes individual insights from 167 children aged 10-13 representing the same four countries, who we interviewed to share their unique understanding of their digital lives and online experiences. We would like to extend our gratitude to the many parents, guardians, and children who helped contribute to this report.
To further explore children’s online habits, we have divided device usage insights across five popular app categories: online video, social media, gaming, education, and communication.
To provide a better picture of the specific apps and platforms kids are using, our research also excludes game launchers such as Epic Games Launcher and Steam, email platforms like Gmail or apps native to specific devices like Phone and FaceTime. Finally, due to the age-inappropriate nature of gambling applications, we have excluded them from our research entirely.
To give visibility to devices used during school hours, we have also included insights from the wider Family Zone group, across 10,000 schools in the US, UK, Spain, and Australia. In our education chapter, we explore the popularity of educational apps and websites used in a classroom setting, rather than just on personal devices in the home.
Families and
technology in 2022
In the fight to strike a balance, screen time and technology use has become a point of contention for many families. In today’s world, parents struggle to manage their own connectivity, while also overseeing their children’s use of technology and their relationship with devices. To gain insight into how parents and guardians are raising today’s fully digital generations, we surveyed families across the US, UK, Australia, and Spain, examining the impact of devices and screen management on their day-to-day family lives.
SCREEN TIME MANAGEMENT IN 2022
Parents use a variety of household screen management strategies to keep on top of their children’s device use, with the majority (91%) employing at least two home strategies or tools to keep screen time in check. Most families seem to prefer a communicative approach to screen time, with the most popular management method being holding frequent conversations about device use. 47% of families assert that they regularly talk to their children about screen time to help them understand the risks involved.
Active limitation is the second most popular screen management method, with 40% of parents removing devices from children at specific times such as bedtime or dinner time, and 36% employing a timer or schedule for screen time use. One third of parents (33%) use a parental control tool with their children, and one in five parents (22%) allows device use in common areas only. Just one in ten parents (12%) uses no specific approach to screen time management.
Approaches to screen time management also differ by age. Parents in the age groups corresponding to millennials and the youngest Gen Xers (25-34 and 35-44) were more likely to rely on management tools and scheduling, as opposed to conversation or no specific approaches at all.
42% of 25-34 year olds stated they used a parental control tool with their child, compared to just 26% of 55-65 year olds. Only 7% of 25-34 year olds use no specific screen time strategies with their children, as opposed to 19% of parents in the 55-65 age group. This shift in screen time management could be due in part to the younger age of the children concerned, but it’s also likely that, due to their more digitally based upbringing, millennial parents search for technological solutions to a technological problem.
Conversely, while almost half of parents (48%) report issues managing their own screen time, over three quarters (76%) do not employ any strategies or tools to help them keep their own technology use in check. Younger parents are more likely to use tools to manage their own screen time, with 32% of 25-34 year-olds and 24% of 35-44 year-olds asserting they use some form of personal screen management strategy, compared to just 12% of 55-65 year-olds.
Do you use any tools or strategies to manage your own screen time?
SCREENS VS. FAMILY TIME: AN ONGOING STRUGGLE
Almost 70% of parents assert that screens or some form of technology are a distraction from family time. Across all age ranges, 52% of parents assert that technology is “sometimes” a distraction, while a further 18% of parents are now “frequently” distracted from time with their families by screens or technology in some form.
Parents in the 25-34 age range are more likely to be affected by screens during family time, with 22% frequently finding themselves distracted by technology, compared to 16% of parents in the 55-65 age range.
Do screens or technology distract you from family time?
STAYING IN THE KNOW:
FAMILIES AND ONLINE TRENDS
For parents, getting information about online trends and their child’s digital hobbies is still best direct from the source: 53% of parents report they go straight to their child. Despite the increased amount of online resources available to parents to help keep on top of trending topics and applications, almost half of parents (46%) heavily rely on word of mouth or conversations with fellow parents to stay informed.
Parents are also more likely to head to social media or Google than to get advice from their child’s school or from dedicated technology websites. 45% of parents reported that they used social platforms to stay on top of the trends their children follow online, while 38% use Google or other search engines to get the answers they need. Less than a third of parents (31%) get information from their child’s school, and only 19% use official websites such as Internet Matters to stay in the know.
Most parents use a combination of methods to stay informed about the latest digital trends, with 68% combining at least two sources, and 44% getting their updates in at least three different ways. Only 8% of parents reported not having received any information from any source about their children’s online hobbies , including directly from their child.
Parents in the youngest age group found it easier to keep up-to-date with potential risks and problematic content their children could face online. 74% of parents aged 25-34 reported it was easy for them to stay updated regarding riskier digital trends, as opposed to 64% of 55-65 year-olds, and 62% of 45-54 year-olds.
TECHNOLOGY IN THE CLASSROOM
DIGITAL MONITORING, IN AND OUT
OF THE CLASSROOM
As technology use in the classroom grows, a school-family connection that keeps parents involved in children’s digital wellbeing is becoming more frequently discussed.
Just as there is a clear need for families to monitor screen time in the home, parents also view school-based monitoring of devices in a positive light. While 21% stated they felt neutral about the use of these tools, the response towards safety monitoring software on school devices confirmed that most parents see it as necessary, with 77% of parents stating they were positive regarding its use.
Technology has a high level of penetration in a classroom setting, but its use varies from country to country. Of all the parents in the countries we surveyed, families in the US reported the highest percentage of device use in the classroom, with 79% of kids using devices as part of their education.
Spanish children were the least likely to use digital devices in a classroom setting, with 33% of parents reporting their kids do not use any devices as part of their education.
As device use in the classroom increases, so too does the need for parents to become more involved in the digital schooling process. Raising good digital citizens is a collective effort, and some level of coherence between tech use at home and in school is essential. Across all countries surveyed, the majority of parents (63%) feel that they are involved in decisions surrounding device use at school, but there is still some way to go towards bridging the gap: 1 in 3 parents (33%) expressed a wish to be more involved in how their child uses digital devices at school.
KEY INSIGHTS
Kids and app use in 2022
Our annual report looks into how children are using their personal devices, including smartphones, tablets, and personal computers, across 5 popular app categories. Here are some of the highlights from 2022.
KEY INSIGHTS
Kids and app use in 2022
Our annual report looks into how children are using their personal devices, including smartphones, tablets, and personal computers, across 5 popular app categories. Here are some of the highlights from 2022.
The average daily time
children spent on TikTok
How long kids spent on average,
per day, on global gaming
phenomenon Roblox
The decrease in time kids spent
on video conferencing app Skype
between 2021 and 2022
The time Australian kids spent
exploring Snapchat daily, up 31%
from 2021’s 64-minute average
The average time children
spent on YouTube daily – 60% less
than the time kids spent watching
shorter videos on TikTok
How much longer children spent
streaming from online video services
between 2021 and 2022
Twitter’s increase in
popularity among kids, during
a newsworthy year for the platform
The daily minutes Spanish children dedicated to math and vocabulary platform Smartick
Research by app category
Online video
In 2022, content was king. So much so that children managed to up their video content time by 18% over the course of the year. For another year running, kids’ eyes were fixed on long-term favorite YouTube, letting the autoplay run enough to hit an average all-time high of 67 daily minutes on the platform. And despite many streaming services facing losses over 2022, Netflix and Amazon Prime Video were winners of 2022’s popularity contest, with viewership increasing by 7% and 10% respectively.
Social media
Children’s social media use continued to climb for another year running, with kids spending 12% more time on their social feeds than they did in 2021. As Instagram and parent company Meta fought to stay relevant, Twitter and TikTok dominated the media, which was reflected in kids’ use of the two social giants. Twitter experienced popularity growth among its youngest users, while TikTok came out on top both in terms of popularity and time spent scrolling, with children recording their highest use yet of the platform.
Gaming
Kids were more than willing to put in the hours needed to progress in online games: across 2022, children racked up a daily average of over 3 hours on multiplayer games, including World of Warcraft and Defense of the Ancients 2. Popularity of these games paled in comparison to children’s champion Roblox. 59% of kids worldwide engage with the online gaming platform, averaging a record 180 minutes of play per day.
Education
Our 2022 annual report analyzes classroom device and personal device use of education apps for the first time. Google tools were a popular choice in classrooms, appearing in the top 3 in the US, Australia, and Spain. Gamified learning proved popular both in and out of the classroom: Educators around the world turned to Kahoot! to make learning fun, and kids were more than happy to carry on the quizzing on their personal devices, placing both Kahoot! and Duolingo in their top 3 most-used apps for 2022.
Communication
The communication app boom of 2020 and 2021 finally met its match in 2022, as kids’ daily use of comms apps fell by 24% globally, reaching an average of just 35 daily minutes. Video calls were out, while text-based communication was in: apps such as WhatsApp and Messages experienced a popularity boost, while Zoom and Skype’s reign seemed to be coming to an end.
Conclusions
Since our annual exploration of kids’ online habits began in 2019, four years ago, it has always been Qustodio’s goal to offer insight into how children experience the digital world. Our research helps families, educators, and guardians understand the trends being shaped, and the role that they can play in keeping children safe as they explore these interests and grow to become healthy digital citizens.
Rather than looking at the time children are spending online and in front of screens as a whole, it’s important to segment where interests really lie, and attempt to bring balance to an increasingly digital upbringing. Our report reveals where children are investing their energy online: where they are making the most of the huge opportunity for creativity, entertainment, and information, while also highlighting areas which raise concern and take away from their balanced, healthy digital experience.
The younger generations are at the forefront of a tipping point: the whole world loves having access to connections, content, and information at their fingertips, but with such great power comes risk, falsehoods, and the exhaustion of being “always on”. Over the next few years comes the struggle to claw back more of a balance. As expressed in our parent interviews and surveys with teens and tweens, families across the world were united in their need for some form of regulation, either through guidance from loved ones, or from tools to help make the job easier.
The fight between screen time and family time will need to continue to be addressed. Those setting the example, who children ultimately mirror, need to learn when is the right time to switch off, staving off the urge to check notifications during mealtimes, or those all-important emails on the family day out.
On the positive side, internet use and enjoyment of devices like smartphones is becoming less of a solitary activity, with families becoming more and more involved in children’s digital lives. And families are not alone in their efforts to protect and educate their children online. In the age of connectivity, the bridge between school and home life has been crossed, with classroom devices becoming more personal as time goes by. Keeping children safe in the digital world is a collective effort, which we believe will be reflected in the years to come, as families and schools work more closely to raise healthy digital citizens together.
The years to come will still be rocky, but with the right tools, support, and teamwork, children and adults alike will be guided along the path to a healthier, more positive digital experience – just as we all deserve.