Roughly half of U.S. teens (52%) are taking steps to cut back on their mobile phone use, as well as use of social media (57%) and video games (58%).
At least that was the finding of a new Pew Research Center report, which polled 743 teens.
And when the question is directed to the teen population as a whole, rather than to their own particular habits, teens are almost unanimously concerned. Almost nine-in-ten teens see spending "too much time online" as a problem facing their age group, while 60% say it is a "major" problem.
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Parents are similarly worried, according to a separate survey.
Pew polled over 1,000 parents of teens and found that almost two thirds (65%) said they were concerned about their teens' screen time, with 57% saying they had set screentime limits in some way. (Both surveys were conducted March 7-April 10, 2018).
But it is also a case of "physician heal thyself" for parents. More than a third of parents (36%) said they spend too much time in front of their own screens. Teens agreed, with 51% saying they sometimes or often find their parents or caregivers to be distracted while they are trying to talk to them.
"Teens" is defined as ages 13-17, and “parents” have at least child in that age group.The margin of error is 5 percentage points for 743 teen respondents and 4.5 percentage points for the 1,058 parents.
