Average child will spend over 700 hours on social media, new tracker reveals

The average UK child will spend around 736 hours on social media between the government announcing plans to raise the social media access age to 16 in June 2026 and new protections taking effect in March 2027. This information comes in light of a new live tracker launched today [14 October] by the Big Tech’s Little Victims campaign.

With the new rules still months away from taking effect, the campaign says every passing day means more children joining platforms and more time spent exposed to addictive design and harmful content.

The tracker shows that, in the four months since the announcement, children have each spent the equivalent of almost 53 school days on social media. Thousands of 13-year-olds have started using platforms for the first time and will remain able to do so until March 2027.

The campaign is being led by the National Education Union (NEU) and a coalition of supporting organisations, experts and community leaders. It says the tracker makes the impact of the wait for protections visible in real time.

NEU: ‘The clock is still ticking for children’

Daniel Kebede, general secretary of the National Education Union, said: 

“The government’s commitment to raise the age of social media access to 16 from March 2027 is an important step, but the clock is still ticking for children. Platforms know when users are 13, yet teachers across the country are seeing harmful online content shape pupils’ behaviour, attitudes and language every day.

“Teachers overwhelmingly believe social media platforms are driving this problem, while parents are left to manage the fallout at home. The government must now publish the detail, ensure the new age requirement is robustly enforced and set out what they will do to protect children between now and March.”

Follow-up study revisits teenage profiles

The tracker is published alongside a targeted follow-up to The Algorithm Experiment. This experiment found that fictional 13-year-old profiles were served an average of one piece of concerning content for every two minutes watched. It provided a snapshot of what children may encounter during the months before the legislation takes effect.

During the small September follow-up to The Algorithm Experiment, researchers returned to the TikTok, Snapchat and YouTube accounts of Ruby and Ethan. These were two fictional 13-year-olds originally created for the experiment in February 2026. The follow-up intended to evaluate whether the content recommended to them had changed since the government’s announcement.

Across follow-up test, the profiles were served an average of one piece of concerning content for every two minutes watched. The average session lasted 30 minutes and included 16 pieces of concerning content. The highest number of pieces of concerning content recorded in a single session was 65.

On average, the profiles encountered their first piece of concerning content after just four minutes and five seconds.

TikTok found to be the most concerning platform

Big Tech’s Little Victims’ latest experiment also revealed clear differences across platforms. It found that:

• TikTok was the most consistently concerning platform in the re-run. All six sessions across Ruby and Ethan’s profiles produced concerning content. It often appeared on average three minutes after scrolling began. One of Ethan’s TikTok sessions served 65 pieces of concerning content, the highest number of the whole experiment.
• Ruby’s TikTok experience was dominated by age-inappropriate sexual content presented through humour, music, relationship advice and viral entertainment. Researchers warned that its light and familiar presentation risked making adult themes appear normal, aspirational or socially acceptable to a 13-year-old.
• Ethan’s TikTok experience combined age-inappropriate material with adult fitness and self-improvement content, hostility towards women, discriminatory narratives and aggressive political material. In the second and third sessions, the feed moved into a dense stream of concerning content after roughly just one minute of scrolling.
• Snapchat produced a less consistent but, at times, emotionally intense experience for Ruby. One session contained no material classified as concerning, while the other two surfaced age-inappropriate sexual content or distressing real-world footage. By the final session, researchers felt the platform appeared to be learning which emotionally charged themes were most likely to hold the user’s attention.
• YouTube Shorts was notably less concerning than TikTok during the re-run. A small number of age-inappropriate items appeared in Ethan’s first session. This included sexualised dancing, age-inappropriate relationship advice and adult fitness regimes. The recommendation pathway did not escalate sharply, and no concerning content was recorded in the second or third sessions.

Gendered recommendations support findings from original experiment

This experiment was a small test case, so it cannot establish a definitive pattern. However, it suggests that the platforms may serve different content depending on the user’s gender. This revelation supports findings from the original experiment. Ruby’s material was more frequently framed through sexual content and emotionally charged clips. On the other hand, Ethan’s was more often hostile, shame-based or ideological.

By the end of the experiment, the content in Ruby and Ethan’s TikTok feeds rarely matched the age-appropriate interests. These included TV, music and comedy and were selected when their accounts were created. 

Local data shows impact in every constituency

The new Time Social Media Takes live tracker brings the human impact closer to home. It localises the data by parliamentary constituency. This enables MPs to see how much time children in their communities are spending on social media before the change takes effect. The campaign says this demonstrates that implementation is not an abstract policy debate taking place in Westminster, but an urgent issue affecting children in every part of the country.

International momentum for stronger safeguards

Following Meta’s multibillion-dollar settlement in the United States, the UK government has said that children here should benefit from protections at least as strong as those being introduced overseas. The European Union is also moving to strengthen safeguards for children online and restrict children’s access to social media.

Campaign calls for further action

The government has now committed to bringing the new minimum age of social media access into effect in March 2027. However, significant questions remain about how the change will work in practice. How will it be enforced? What protections will children have in the months before implementation? Against that backdrop, the Big Tech’s Little Victims campaign is also calling for:

• guidance on the health impacts of social media on children and young people
• guaranteed space on the school curriculum to teach digital literacy
• a watermark for ethical advertising for social media platforms
• a windfall tax on social media companies to pay for mental health services