At the start of secondary school, your tween will likely want to make the most of increased freedom and independence. As such, how they use their devices changes.
This is a crucial time to talk to them about how to manage their screen time and give them strategies to find a healthy balance to support friendships and school.
Find tips and advice below to help them do just that.
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GET YOUR TOOLKITChildren starting secondary school are more independent than those in primary or younger. Research from Ofcom found that tweens spend more time sending messages or making voice/video calls (98%), using social media apps or sites (93%) and posting their own content on video-sharing platforms (47%).
During the weekday, most children (38%) at this age spend 1-2 hours on devices (with 33% spending 3-4 hours). However, at the weekend, the majority of 11-13-year-olds spend 3-4 hours online per day. In our tracker survey of parents and children, 45% of 11-13-year-olds said they experienced the feeling of ‘spending too much time online.’
Some research from The Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry suggests links between excessive screen use and behavioural disorders in pre-teens, particularly conduct disorder (69%) and oppositional defiant disorder (46%). The more hours spent on screens, the higher these numbers. However, this doesn’t mean that every child who spends excessive time on screen will develop these disorders. If you have concerns, speak with your child’s GP.
54% of parents of 11-13s say they worry about the amount of time their child spends online.
According to Ofcom, 82% of 12-15-year-olds use apps or sites for social media and sending messages or making calls. These more social activities highlight a greater desire in pre-teens to connect with others.
76% of 12-15-year-olds play video games online (Ofcom). Around 3/4s of 11- and 12-year-olds played single-player games with around 6 in 10 playing multiplayer games.
35% of 12-15-year-olds who played video games said they played with or against people they didn’t know offline.
Our tracker survey asked pre-teens about the sites, platforms, apps or games they used. The following are most used for 11-14-year-olds in rough order of popularity:
In our tracker survey, 70% of parents of 11-13-year-olds said they were concerned about their child ‘spending too much time online or on connected devices.’ Additionally, only 51% of parents say their 12-15-year-olds have good screen time balance (Ofcom). This is lower than 16-17s (56%), 8-11s (68%), 5-7s (72%) and 3-4-year-olds (73%).
In most cases, pre-teens are starting new schools and getting new devices. At 13, they also reach the age requirement for many social media platforms. This sudden freedom could contribute to this feeling of poor screen time balance.
It’s important to look out for signs of too much screen time in tweens. These signs can include:
Remember that the above signs of too much screen time in pre-teens can also relate to other issues. It’s important to look at the whole picture and ask yourself if these issues could relate to something else. For any concerns, contact your child’s GP.
Here are 5 ways to help pre-teens manage their screen use and time online.
Children seek out rules to follow so it’s best these come from you and not their peers. Set up a family agreement that you all sign up to, to manage expectations of what they should and shouldn’t be doing online. These boundaries should help them prioritise sleep, face to face interactions and family time to strike a healthy balance.
Take an interest in their digital world to better guide them as they become more socially active online and start to draw from friends and online sources to build their identity.
Give them the space to be more independent and build their resilience online to ensure they make smart choices about how they use tech.
The more you understand how your child interacts online and check-in with them about their interest and challenges online, the easier it will be for them to come to you if they are concerned or worried about something.
As children become more active online, have regular conversations with them about ways to deal with a range of risks that they may be exposed to such as seeing inappropriate content or being cyberbullied.
Make sure they know when and where to seek help if they need it and what tools they can use to deal with it.
You can read about how to report inappropriate content here.
As they get older and more confident in their digital world, it’s important to encourage them to be more responsible and aware of how their screen use can impact them and others.
Giving them the space to thrive online, while also keeping the channels of communications open and being on the lookout for any differences in behaviour that might suggest something isn’t quite right is key.
It’s a tricky time for young people anyway so it’s important to equip them with the tools to make smart decisions and ensure they are able to seek support when they need it most.
Encourage young people to make use of the screen-time tools that come with their phone. Most children at this age will say that being more aware of how much time they spend is helpful.
They will still need some encouragement to make changes to what they are doing and the amount of time they are spending but it’s better that they start to discover and monitor this for themselves where possible.
See related advice and practical tips to support children online:
