How Long on Average Do Teenagers Spend on Facebook Per Week?

In today's tech-savvy world, it is almost considered abnormal if your teen isn't actively engaged in online social networking. She is checking her Facebook news feed on the drive to school. Her cell phone is constantly buzzing with notifications. She holds her cell phone more than her fork during dinner. Parents may be concerned their children are too electronically dependent, yet in reality, many adults are just as hooked to Facebook as their children.

  1. Logged on a Lot

    • Various groups tracking the use of social networks provide differing numbers on Facebook usage, but the trend is the same: People in general -- teens included -- are spending significant portions of their day using Facebook. A November 2012 survey by Social Networking Statistics reports the average Facebook user spends 15 hours and 33 minutes on Facebook each month. A March 2011 Nielsen survey shows that Facebook users spent an average of 6.5 hours using the social network.

    Girls Log on More

    • Girls are more likely than guys to log on to Facebook each day. Forty-eight percent of female teenage Facebook users reported logging in at least once a day, according to a September 2012 study by the Pew Research Center and the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. Most of these girls logged in to Facebook several times per day. Only 36 percent of male teenager users reported logging in once per day.

    What They Do On Facebook

    • While parents and other adult authorities are rightly concerned that teens are sharing too much private information on Facebook, statistics show that the bulk of the activity is social chatter. Eighty-six percent comment on a friend's Facebook wall post and 83 percent comment on their friend's pictures, according to Web Wise Kids. Communicating solely to their friends is also a big time consumer on Facebook: 66 percent send private messages to their friends.

    Privacy Remains Questionable

    • Only nine percent of teen Facebook users are concerned that a third party might improperly access personal information associated with their account, according to Pew Research Center. Only 60 percent of teens set their Facebook security setting to private, only allowing their Facebook "friends" and not even "friends of friends" to see their information. Parents aren't setting a much better example: 80 percent of parents reported they used privacy controls to limit access to information such as their posts, photos and current location, according to Consumer Reports. Pew researchers also discovered that 21 percent of teens share their cell phone numbers publicly and 54 percent share their email address publicly.

    Too Many Parents Online Now

    • The bulk of teens interviewed by the Pew Research Center in September 2012 indicated that Facebook is now too overrun by adults -- especially their parents. But that doesn't mean they are deactivating their Facebook accounts. Doing so would be social suicide since "everyone" else is on Facebook; they might miss out on a crucial piece of social information. That thinking is not necessarily flawed: Pew discovered that 95 percent of teens who are active on social networks do indeed have a Facebook account. However, a growing number of teens are adding Twitter and Instagram to their online social activity, because parents and older Facebook users have yet to discover or master the use of these two platforms.

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