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A majority of pre-teens now own a smartphone and spend nearly two hours on it every day, according to the “Born Social 2024” study carried out by the heaven agency in partnership with the Génération Numérique association. Messaging, social networks and online games have their favors.
The rate of smartphone ownership among young people increases from 71% at 11 years old to 90% at 12 years old. While the majority of respondents received their very first smartphone at age 10 or 11, 2% of respondents got their first phone before age 6.
11-12 year olds spend an average of 1 hour 51 minutes on their phone every day, or 2 minutes more than in 2023, with YouTube being the application on which they spend the most time, ahead of WhatsApp, Snapchat, TikTok and Instagram. Because, if the official minimum age for using most social networks is set at 13, a lot of younger children do not hesitate to connect to them and be particularly active. This is why three quarters of 11 and 12 year old children indicate that they use at least one social network, a figure up 3 points compared to 2023.
This report also shows a significant development of Whatsapp, which is establishing itself as cross-generational messaging, especially since it uses the codes of social networks (statuses/stories). Indeed, to communicate online with their friends, 11-12 year olds primarily favor messaging applications (this is the case for 69% of respondents), ahead of online games (63%) and traditional SMS ( 58%). Only 33% of young people surveyed have the reflex to make a phone call to their contacts from time to time. Only 22% of them communicate with each other via social networks.
Online, their main interests are video games (55%), manga (41%), humor (40%), arts (30%), fashion and music (26%) as well than series (24%). Among the influencers, Inoxtag (the survey was carried out before the release of its film “Kaizen”) is now the favorite of 11-12 year olds, ahead of Michou and Squeezie.
Finally, regarding the emergence of artificial intelligence, only 4% of young people surveyed admit to using it at least once a week, mainly ChatGPT and MyAI (Snapchat). However, an overwhelming majority of 11/12 year olds (74%) have never used an online AI service.
This study was carried out through a series of video interviews with 200 young people aged 11 or 12, selected from the IDM Families / Xerfi panel.