Average Screen Time by Age, From Toddlers to Retirees

Average screen time by age climbs fast in childhood, peaks in the late teens and early twenties, then slowly falls. A US baby under 2 averages about an hour of screen media a day. A teenager averages about 8.6 hours of entertainment screens. Adults online worldwide average 6 hours 38 minutes, from over 7 hours at 16 to 24 down to about 4 hours past 65.

There is no single survey that tracks everyone from birth to retirement, so I’ve stitched this together from the best source for each age. Each one measures something slightly different, and I’ll flag where that matters. Then I’ve put each number next to what pediatricians and health agencies actually recommend.

Average Screen Time by Age: The Full Table

Here is the short version. Kids’ figures come from US parent and teen surveys. Adult figures are global time online on any device, which includes work, so they run higher than leisure-only numbers.

The striking part is the middle column against the right one. By age 2, the average kid is already double the WHO’s ceiling. By the teen years, it’s about four times the Canadian guideline. Nobody is hitting these targets, which tells you something about either the targets or the phones. I lean toward the phones.

Babies and Toddlers (Under 5)

The 2025 Common Sense Census surveyed 1,578 US parents of kids 8 and under. Children under 2 averaged 1 hour 3 minutes of screen media a day, and 2 to 4 year olds averaged 2 hours 8 minutes. Most of that is TV and video: 46 minutes a day for under-2s and 1 hour 34 minutes for 2 to 4 year olds.

Some of the details are a bit grim. Forty percent of kids have their own tablet by age 2. Toddlers aged 2 to 4 already watch about 10 minutes of short-form video a day, the TikTok and Shorts kind, which is not a sentence I expected to write about people who can’t yet tie shoes.

The guidelines here are the strictest of any age. The World Health Organization’s 2019 guidance says no screen time at all under age 1, and no more than an hour a day for ages 2 to 4, with less being better. The American Academy of Pediatrics says to avoid screens other than video chatting before 18 to 24 months, and to keep 2 to 5 year olds to about an hour of high-quality programming, ideally watched together.

Kids 5 to 12: When Screens Become Their Own

Ages 5 to 8 average 3 hours 28 minutes of screen media a day, according to the same 2025 census. Gaming is where the growth is: kids this age game for about an hour a day, and gaming across the whole 0 to 8 group rose 65% in four years. Nearly 1 in 4 kids has a personal cellphone by age 8.

For tweens aged 8 to 12, the 2021 Common Sense Census of tweens and teens found 5 hours 33 minutes of entertainment screen media a day, up from 4 hours 44 minutes in 2019. That figure leaves out schoolwork, so a tween who also does homework on a laptop is well past six hours.

There’s no WHO number for this age, but Canada’s 24-Hour Movement Guidelines for Children and Youth set a clear one: no more than 2 hours a day of recreational screen time for ages 5 to 17. If you want a parent-friendly breakdown of how to get there, our guide to kids’ screen time covers it.

Teenagers: The Peak Years

US teens 13 to 18 averaged 8 hours 39 minutes of entertainment screen media a day in the 2021 Common Sense Census. The CDC asks the question differently and still lands in the same place: half of US teens ages 12 to 17 (50.4%) report 4 or more hours of daily recreational screen time, rising to 55% among 15 to 17 year olds.

The CDC data also shows why this group gets so much attention. Among teens with 4+ hours a day, 27.1% reported anxiety symptoms in the past two weeks, against 12.3% of teens under 4 hours. Depression symptoms were 25.9% versus 9.5%. That’s a correlation, not proof, but it’s a large one.

For the full teen breakdown by gender, app and school hours, see our average screen time for teenagers report.

What Is the Average Screen Time for Adults by Age?

For adults, the best age breakdown is GWI’s global survey, published in DataReportal’s Digital 2025 report. Internet users 16 and older spend an average of 6 hours 38 minutes online a day on any device. The 16 to 24 group tops the chart at about 7 hours 35 minutes for women and 7 hours 11 minutes for men. From there it slides by roughly half an hour per decade, to about 4 hours for people 65 and up.

That’s all internet time, including your work laptop, so it overstates leisure. If you want phones specifically, our average phone screen time breakdown covers daily smartphone use and how countries compare.

The same BLS table shows leisure gaming and computer use peaking at 1.53 hours a day for 15 to 19 year olds, about triple the figure for 35 to 44 year olds. People in their late thirties and forties have the least leisure time of any group, which is probably the only reason their numbers look restrained.

One caveat: the BLS survey records your main activity. Scrolling your phone while the TV runs mostly gets logged as TV, so the phone side of these numbers is undercounted. For more on screens later in life, see phone addiction in older adults.

How Much Screen Time Is Recommended by Age?

Here are the official recommendations in one place. Note how they stop at 17. Adults get no guideline at all, presumably because nobody wanted to be the agency telling grown-ups to put the phone down.

• Under 1: no screen time (WHO).
• Under 18 to 24 months: no screens except video chat (AAP).
• Ages 2 to 4 or 5: no more than 1 hour a day, and less is better (WHO, AAP).
• Ages 5 to 17: no more than 2 hours a day of recreational screen time (Canadian 24-Hour Movement Guidelines).
• Adults: no official limit.

For adults, the closest thing to evidence is experimental. In a 2025 randomized trial in BMC Medicine, 111 university students averaging about 4.6 hours of daily smartphone use were split into two groups. One group cut back to 2 hours a day for three weeks. That group ended up with fewer depressive symptoms, less stress, better sleep and higher well-being than the group that carried on as usual.

The catch: screen time bounced right back once the study ended. So 2 hours a day of phone time is a reasonable personal target, but only if you build something that holds it there. Our guide to how much screen time is too much goes deeper on where the harm starts.

How to Get Your Screen Time Below Your Age Group’s Average

Comparing yourself to your age group is a decent reality check, but the averages are high. Beating them is the floor, not the goal. Here’s what actually moves the number.

If you’d like help with step two, get Go Gray on the App Store, or read about how grayscale mode affects screen time first.

Why These Numbers Don’t All Match

You’ll see wildly different averages online because the sources count different things. Common Sense counts entertainment media and can double count multitasking. The CDC caps its answer at “4 or more hours.” GWI counts every minute online, work included. The BLS counts only your main activity.

None of them is wrong. They just answer different questions. Treat the table above as a rough map of how screen time rises and falls over a life, rather than a precise scoreboard. The direction is clear, and so is the gap between what we do and what the guidelines suggest.