Mobile app usage of children in the United States - statistics & facts
Kids love apps as much as adults. In the last years, children have been increasingly receiving their first cell phones and smartphones at early ages, making apps constantly available at their fingertips. In 2024, over six in 10 children in the United States owned their own cell phone, making apps a stable interactive point with online environments for young internet users.
learning environments such as Duolingo and Photomath only saw around 13 minutes and 10 minutes of daily engagements from U.S. kids in 2023. In comparison, children in the U.S. spent over 80 minutes daily using the YouTube app, as well as around 50 minutes on the Netflix app consuming video content during the same year.
According to a June 2023 study on companies and digital products for children and families, 13 percent of companies do not disclose their data practices and data selling, while under the CPRA, 62 percent of the companies have to disclose if they sell data to third parties.
The most recent smartphone ownership trends in the United States provided an onboarding occasion for the younger mobile audiences, making apps increasingly available to children. While kids used school and education apps daily, video apps such as YouTube presented higher time spent trends among younger audiences. Parenting apps have been supplying families with several functionalities to keep kids safe online, such as website blocking and location-tracking. Overall, despite presenting privacy concerns and problematics, mobile app usage is a stable part of children’s online presence.
It’s screen time: digital consumption among kids
From school to home, digital devices have more and more become a part of childhood. However, time spent in front of screens by children has become an increasingly problematic and worrisome issue for U.S. parents. According to a survey of parents in the United States, 16 percent of respondents reported considering it appropriate for children younger than nine years to have a smartphone.learning environments such as Duolingo and Photomath only saw around 13 minutes and 10 minutes of daily engagements from U.S. kids in 2023. In comparison, children in the U.S. spent over 80 minutes daily using the YouTube app, as well as around 50 minutes on the Netflix app consuming video content during the same year.
Young users protection and mobile parental controls
Being a more vulnerable category of users on the internet, U.S. children are the focus of several pieces of legislation to protect their online privacy and regulate or ban the misuse of their personal data. Passed first in 1998, the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) was drafted by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission to monitor digital companies and enforce the requirements set to protect users under 13 years of age. As of 2024, several high-profile U.S. companies, such as Microsoft and Amazon, were hit by heavy fines, with Epic Games’ Fortnite receiving the highest penalty of 520 million U.S. dollars in 2022. In 2019, TikTok (known at the time as Musical.ly) was fined 5.7 million U.S. dollars for not doing enough to prevent usage by 13-year-olds, while YouTube received a fine of approximately 170 million U.S. dollars during the same year.According to a June 2023 study on companies and digital products for children and families, 13 percent of companies do not disclose their data practices and data selling, while under the CPRA, 62 percent of the companies have to disclose if they sell data to third parties.
Apps in the parents’ digital toolbox
While legislators have been exercising top-down pressure to monitor companies, families have found an unexpected ally in parental control apps. Parental control software companies have been increasingly developing mobile applications to monitor children’s screen time and online interactions, as well as blocking access to unsafe websites. According to a July 2024 survey of U.S. parents, over half of respondents reported using family monitoring apps, while 60 percent reported using cell phones built-in tracking for checking on their kids’ location. During the second quarter of 2024, there were approximately 4,224parental control and family apps on the Google Play Store.The most recent smartphone ownership trends in the United States provided an onboarding occasion for the younger mobile audiences, making apps increasingly available to children. While kids used school and education apps daily, video apps such as YouTube presented higher time spent trends among younger audiences. Parenting apps have been supplying families with several functionalities to keep kids safe online, such as website blocking and location-tracking. Overall, despite presenting privacy concerns and problematics, mobile app usage is a stable part of children’s online presence.
