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This survey looks at the impact of excessive screen time and social media on well-being and mental health, and provides many insights into the use of screens and the impacts for EU teens aged 13-18.
Between 30 March and 16 April 2026, 26,297 teenagers and 12,750 parents were interviewed, covering all EU countries. Interviewing both parents and children makes it possible to compare the children's reported experiences with parents’ perceptions, expectations and concerns.
Key findings
Screen time
- On a typical school day, 25% of EU teens already exceed six hours of screen time, a figure that rises to 46% on weekend days, when 14% even pass the ten-hour threshold.
- On a school day, parents estimate 3.4 hours of screen time compared to 4.5 hours declared by adolescents
themselves; on weekend day, 5.3 hours against 6.1 hours.
- Those teens who started on social media before age 10 report 7.5 hours of weekend day screen time against 5.7 hours among those who started after age 14.
- Within the time spent per day, social media is the leading online activity at 2.6 hours, ahead of gaming, schoolwork and streaming (2.2 hours each) and messaging (2 hours)
Perception
- Teens are more than twice as likely as parents to see screens positively (40% vs 17%) and also more than twice as likely to see social media’s impact on mental wellbeing positively (48% vs 21%).
- 48% of teens see social media as a positive influence on their wellbeing against only 18% who see a negative one.
Safety and well-being
- A third of EU teens report headaches (33%) or concentration problems (32%) over the past month, while similarly high proportions report tired eyes (34%) or fatigue (33%).
- 27% of teens report eating less healthily, 24% pain in the back, neck or wrists, 21% lack of time for hobbies, 19% lack of physical exercise, 19% lack of time to meet friends in person, 15% lack of family time, and 13% the use of substances such as tobacco, nicotine, alcohol or drugs.
- For weekend screen-time brackets, symptoms more than double between light and heavy users: tired eyes rise from 17% to 46%, fatigue from 19% to 46%, concentration difficulties from 18% to 45% and sleep problems from 18% to 44%.
- 72% of parents are concerned about exposure to harmful content and 61% about contact with strangers, against 54% on sleep and 51% on school performance.
- Nine in ten EU teens have encountered at least one harmful or distressing piece of content online in the past three months, led by AI-generated content (39%) and misinformation (35%).
Prevention and protection
- When it comes to protecting their child online, parental responses are dominated by dialogue (47%
proactively, 63% after an incident), well ahead of more coercive measures.
- 74% of parents hold weekly conversations with their child on social media, including 20% on a daily basis, with daily dialogue more frequent with mothers (24% vs 15% with fathers) and varying widely across countries.
- Beyond dialogue, parents limit their child's time online (41%), encourage breaks from social media (40%), use parental control or screen-time tools (33%), delete apps (20%) or report harmful content (18%).
- On actions that would most help protect children, 47% of parents and 48% of teens call for better implementation of existing platform rules, ahead of age limits (parents 54% vs teens 45%) and better access to mental health support (teens 42% vs parents 26%, the widest divergence).