Screen time by the numbers
Published Updated
How much time do we really spend on our screens? The 2026 figures, France and worldwide, each with its official source and year.
In brief
In 2026, the average French person spends nearly 4 hours a day in front of a screen, across all devices, including more than 3 hours online (80 % of it on mobile). One in four exceeds 5 hours a day, and nearly 4 in 10 among 18-24s.
How much in France?
per day in front of screens, all devices (a quarter of waking hours)
2025 Digital Barometer, Arcep
of French people spend over 5h a day on screens (39% among 18-24s)
2025 Digital Barometer, Arcep
of French internet time happens on mobile (over 90% among 15-24s)
Médiamétrie, Internet Year 2025
Browsing time keeps climbing: 2h24 a day in 2023, 2h40 in 2024, then more than 3 hours in 2025, a record according to Médiamétrie, and most of it happens on mobile. Seven in ten French people already spend more than 2 hours a day on screens for personal use, and 42 % feel they spend too much time there. The feeling tracks the figures.
And worldwide?
per day on social and video feeds (social, YouTube, TikTok)
DataReportal, Digital 2026
per day across all online media, nearly 29% of waking hours
DataReportal, Digital 2026
Worldwide, social media and video capture more than two and a half hours a day on average, and across all online media, the connected adult exceeds four and a half hours daily, nearly 29 % of their waking hours. This isn’t a willpower failure: it’s the result of a design built to hold your attention.
Young people on the front line
of media per day for US teens (13-18)
Common Sense Media, 2021
per day for tweens (8-12)
Common Sense Media, 2021
per day already for ages 0-8
Common Sense Media, 2025
Among 15-24s, online time already reaches nearly 5 hours a day, almost entirely on mobile. In the US, teen media time outlasts a full school day. And exposure starts early: from the youngest ages, screens already fill several hours a day.
The “smartphone time” figure nobody really measures
How many hours a day on your phone, exactly? You’ll read “3h47 a day” everywhere, but that figure traces back to no verifiable French public source. The two serious references measure something else: Médiamétrie counts internet browsing time (3 hours a day, 80 % of it on mobile), and Arcep’s Digital Barometer, time in front of all screens (nearly 4 hours). The smartphone concentrates most of our attention without any official statistic isolating it cleanly. Keep the order of magnitude, and be wary of over-precise figures with no dated source.
What these numbers reveal
The problem isn’t the raw hour count: your phone also helps you work, get around, stay connected. What weighs is passive scrolling, the minutes that pile up giving you nothing back. And you don’t escape it on willpower alone: that’s doomscrolling, sustained by app design. The right answer acts on the system, not the effort: measure, add friction, protect whole windows, replace. We lay out the method in our guide to reducing screen time and the full anti-scroll guide.
Sources
- 2025 Digital Barometer (CREDOC for Arcep, Arcom, CGE and ANCT)
- Médiamétrie, Internet Year 2025 (published 12 February 2026)
- DataReportal, Digital 2026 Global Overview Report
- Common Sense Media, The Common Sense Census (teens 2021, kids 0-8 2025)
Methodologies vary from one study to the next (age brackets, screen types, countries): each figure holds for its source and year, cited above.
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