survey RESULTS
Below, you can find the analysis of selected results of my survey. To view the full results on your own, click the button on the bottom of the website.
device usage on a daily basis
One of the first questions asked had to do with the amount of digital devices used by teenagers on a daily basis. The vast majority of responses suggested that they utilize two or three different digital devices per day, with no-one claiming to be using more than 5 digital devices on a day-to-day basis. At the same time, we can observe that almost 89% of respondents have received access to at least one of the digital devices mentioned above since joining high-school, with more than one fourth getting permanent access to a TV set, a Personal Computer and a smart portable device. These results suggest that adolescence is the age where people get in touch with digital technologies.
device preference
As far as preferred devices are concerned, we can see that almost 60% of respondents spend the most time on their PC, whereas one third consider the smartphone their most utilized device on a daily basis, making these 2 the most prominent devices among the teenagers asked. Meanwhile, about 75% of respondents have had a change in the device they spent the most time on since joining high school, with one third claiming to have had such a change on more than one occasions. This further reinforces that modern adolescence is the age where digital technology plays a more prominent role in one’s life, resulting in changes in preference.
TIME SPENT USING DIGITAL DEVICES: AUGMENTED OR DIMINISHED?
When asked about the time they spend using digital devices nowadays in comparison to the time they’d spent since joining high school, 63% of respondents believe that there has been significant increase in the time they spend using digital technologies, whereas an additional 14.8% considers that there has been a slight increase. In other words, 77.8% of respondents consider that there has been an increase in their day-to-day usage of digital technology, further confirming the view stated above.
INTERNET AS AN EDUCATIONAL TOOL AND AS AN ENTERTAINMENT DEVICE
Considering that the pandemic situation has forced global education to move to a digital approach, you would consider that there would be a significant amount of time spent by teenagers online related solely to education. Nevertheless, this was not actually the case: one third of respondents actually spend less than an hour daily on digital education (excluding virtual class), with 29.6% spending between one and two hours. Interestingly, the majority of respondents spend between one and two hours daily on the internet for solely recreational purposes, when only 18.5% spend less than an hour daily. These results demonstrate how the internet still hasn’t been adopted fully as an educational tool despite the pandemic situation, making it more prominent in teenagers’ lives as an entertainment method.
INTERNET DAILY USAGE
When the respondents were asked whether their daily usage of the Internet has increased on average, more than half of them believed that it had absolutely increased, when one third believed that there was an increase in time spent, but only to a certain extent. In other words, more than 85% of respondents consider their time online to have increased during adolescence, proving that the teenage life is affected by digital technologies to a much larger extent than before.
SOCIAL MEDIA & TEENAGERS
Social Media takes up a majority of the time teenagers
spend on the internet. In fact, a lot of people even consider it the pastime they
spend the most time on (as suggested by my extensive survey results which you
can find below). When it comes to their preferred social media, however, there
is a clear duopoly between YouTube and Instagram, which seem to be the main
preferences of adolescents. These two social networks take up more than 90% of teenagers’
preferred networks, leaving social media giants such as Facebook, Twitter and
Tik-Tok to take up the rest. Meanwhile, we can see that 63% have had at least
one change in preference regarding social media since joining high school, meaning
that most teenagers have changed their mind on which is the network they prefer
the most.
INTERNET DEPENDENCE
Nowadays, teenagers are considered heavily impacted from digital technologies, as they are the first generation who have grown up with the Internet as such a prominent part of our lives. However, only 11.1% of respondents consider themselves absolutely dependent on the Internet for their recreational time, whereas the majority considers themselves dependent to an extent. At the same time, 44.4% of respondents either think they’re not dependent on the Internet, which is a substantial percentage. Meanwhile, opinions were split on whether this has changed during their teenage years, but only 11.1% where confident there was change, with the rest being uncertain. In fact, almost 30% feels certain that there hasn’t been any change in their mentality. Resultingly, according to the survey, teenagers don’t consider themselves fully dependent on the internet for their recreational time, even though they spend substantial amounts of time on it.
INTERNET ADDICTION
Closing of the survey, it was necessary to ask whether teenagers themselves thought that they should reduce the time they themselves would spend online. Interestingly, out of the 27 respondents, not even one was confident that the time they would spend on a daily basis should definitely not be reduced. In fact, more than half of the respondents claim that they should reduce the time they spend to an extent, with one third being absolutely certain that they should spend less time on the Internet. In other words, teenagers might consider themselves independent from the Internet when it comes to their recreational time, but they still think they might spend an excessive amount of time and there should be change.
Understanding the results.