Among some parents and educators there is a great deal of concern as to the amount of time teens and young adults spend online. While some estimates have them online for approximately seven hours each day, many sources believe it’s a much higher figure. If you look around the Web, you will see that some estimates believe that our youth are spending at least nine hours each and every day online. That’s more than a third of the day, and easily more than half their waking hours. But then, the question remains, how exactly are they spending that time? These are the three most popular ways without a doubt.
1. Gaming
All you need to do is look around online and in any department store and you will get an idea of just how popular online gaming is. Very few games are not connected anymore, and gaming has become its own little sub-culture in itself. In fact, check out all the things young people have on their holiday list, and you will see that gaming computers, monitors, games and gaming accessories like those found on Lenovo take high priority. Some people think gaming should actually fall within a form of social media because those headsets keep them chatting the whole game through.
2. Social Media
For a long time, Facebook and YouTube were the two most popular social sites that teens would frequent. Even though Facebook is still listed as the leading social site and YouTube comes in at a close second, there is a new kid on the block that has taken the world by storm. TikTok is thought by many to be social media, but according to TikTok themselves, it is more of an entertainment site. Perhaps it is both? Those short little videos are highly entertaining, but TikTok is a site on which subscribers seem to form little communities. So, is it a social platform or an entertainment site? Is there any reason it can’t be both?
3. Entertainment
Streaming entertainment is also quite popular among young people. It should come as no surprise that Netflix and Amazon top the list of streaming media services for entertainment but Disney+, Hulu and HBO Max are right up there too. Take a few minutes to see what young people around you are doing on that mobile device. If they aren’t gaming or on social media, you can bet your bottom dollar they are streaming a movie or binging on their most recent favorite series.
While most parents and educators would rather see our youth spending more online time in educational pursuits, it doesn’t look like that is going to happen anytime in the near future. Perhaps savvy educators could find a way to work the classics into those games they so dearly love or maybe Netflix could add those very same works of literature adapted for the Silver Screen into their selections. It’s anyone’s guess as to how to satisfy both the need for educational pursuits and socialization, but even so, there is no question that our young people literally live online.