Listening to music is still the favourite activity for US teens according to a study conducted by Common Sense with 82% of them listening to music every day. 2019 The Common Sense Census: Media use by Tweens and Teens is a report which presents the results of a nationally representative survey of more than 1,600 US. 8- to 18-year-olds about their use of and relationship with media. The survey covers their enjoyment of various types of media activities, how frequently they engage in those activities, and how much time they spend doing so. The data is presented for two age groups: tweens (8- to 12-year-olds) and teens (13- to 18-year-olds). Questions ranged from reading books in print and listening to the radio to using social media, watching online videos, and playing mobile games. It also enquired into young people’s interactions with media technologies ranging from television sets and video game consoles to virtual reality headsets and smart speakers.
Census topics
• The degree to which tweens and teens enjoy using different types of media, from watching TV to listening to music and playing video games.
• How often they do each of these media activities: daily, weekly, monthly, or less.
• In any given day, how much time they spend engaging in various media activities, with screen or non-screen media.
• To what extent young people or their parents monitor the amount of time spent using screen media.
• How media usage varies by age, gender, race/ethnicity, household income, or parent education.
• Which media technologies young people own or have access to at home, and how that varies based on age or socioeconomic status.
• To what degree young people use media technology to help with their homework, and which devices they use.
• The extent to which young people multitask with entertainment media while doing homework, and what impact they think that has on the quality of their work.
Listening to music continues to be one of the most popular media activities among both tweens and teens. Among tweens, it is second only to watching online videos, with 55% saying they enjoy music ‘a lot’. Among teens, music is the favourite activity. Nearly three out of four (74%) say they enjoy listening ‘a lot’ – far above the next most popular activity (watching online videos, at 58%). Even such seemingly popular activities as using social media or watching TV don’t compare (41% of teens enjoy using social media and 33% enjoy watching TV ‘a lot’).
Among teens, 82% say they listen to music ‘every day,’ again far higher than other media activities, such as watching online videos (69%) or using social media (63%), the next closest activities in terms of frequency. Finally, teens spend more time listening to music per day (2:05) than doing any other activity (unless watching TV and watching online videos are added together). By comparison, they spend about an hour and a half (1:36) on all types of gaming combined and an hour and 10 minutes a day, on average, using social media. In sum, music is the most enjoyed type of media activity among American teenagers, it is the thing they do most frequently, and they devote more time to it than to any other type of media.
Multitasking with media during homework
About half (47%) of all teens say they ‘often’ listen to music while doing their homework, about one in four (24%) say they ‘often’ text, and about one in five say they ‘often’ use social media (19%) or have the TV on (19%) while they’re doing homework. The proportion of teens that multitask with media during homework has remained virtually unchanged since 2015.
Common Sense is the US’s leading nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the lives of kids and families by providing the trustworthy information, education, and independent voice they need to thrive in the 21st century.
