Study: kids aged 4 to 18 globally spent an average of 112 minutes daily on TikTok in 2023, up from 107 minutes YoY and 60% more than YouTube; 20% tried ChatGPT
Context & Ripple Effects
TikTok’s youth engagement has risen across successive measurements: it averaged 91 minutes a day by late 2021 and 107 minutes a day in 2022. The new figure extends that trajectory rather than marking a one-off reversal.
The gap with YouTube has persisted as TikTok became the more time-intensive service for young users; an earlier analysis similarly found TikTok ahead of YouTube in daily youth viewing time. This study also adds an early measure of generative-AI exposure among the same age range.
First-order effects
- TikTok retains a substantial lead over YouTube in daily time spent among children aged 4 to 18, strengthening its position as a primary youth-attention platform.
- One in five respondents having tried ChatGPT shows that generative-AI products had already reached a meaningful share of young users in 2023.
Second-order effects
- The sustained time gap raises the competitive pressure on YouTube and other video platforms to retain younger audiences through formats, creators and product experiences that match short-form consumption.
- Early ChatGPT use makes AI literacy, safety controls and age-appropriate product design more immediate concerns for schools, families and consumer AI providers.
Third-order effects
- If youth attention continues to concentrate in a small set of recommendation-driven platforms, platform governance and age-appropriate design will become more consequential competitive and policy issues.
- The pairing of entrenched short-form video use with early AI experimentation points to a youth internet shaped by both algorithmic feeds and conversational tools, though adoption depth beyond trial use remains unclear.
The trend: Youth digital habits are consolidating around high-engagement recommendation feeds while generative-AI tools enter mainstream consumer use at increasingly young ages.