After long being ignored by researchers, the importance of social factors in inequalities in screen use is beginning to be taken into account. And the picture is damning. Three major factors of inequality have been identified: the mother’s cultural level, living conditions and their consequences on both young children and adolescents, and finally the existence of family rules around digital use.
The mother’s level of education
Using voice recognition technology to objectively measure screen exposure, rather than relying on parental reports, an Australian study showed that the majority of infants and young children exceed screen time recommendations, that this screen time increases with age, and that children whose mother has a higher level of education are exposed on average to 1h43 less per day than those from less advantaged backgrounds1. A gender difference also appears at 6 months: girls are then very slightly more exposed than boys, although this gap tends to narrow with age.
Children whose mother has a low cultural level are not only more exposed, but also less supported in their development. This lesser support concerns first of all reading, whose importance is well known in building episodic memory and narrative landmarks, which themselves play an essential role in structuring thought. Later, these children are also less supported in discovering digital tools and using video games. They do not benefit from the support often provided by mothers in advantaged social backgrounds when posting their first video or first photograph on the Internet, and also when discovering the right to privacy and the right to one’s image: the first allows everyone to decide whether or not to be photographed or filmed, while the second concerns the freedom each person has to decide how their image may be used, notably when it comes to putting it on the Internet. Yet this education is fundamental for knowing afterwards how to manage self-exposure on social networks.
Influence of living conditions on young children’s practices
First of all, in disadvantaged backgrounds, domestic space is often limited. When parents switch on the television to unwind, it is difficult to keep young children away. A couple living with a baby in a single room can hardly prevent the baby from being exposed to the screen once the parents use it for their own relaxation, with consequences for sleep.
A study carried out by Common Sense Media in the United States in 20202 highlights the extent of socio-economic and cultural inequalities in the length of children’s exposure to screens. Children from low-income households3 spend on average nearly two hours more per day in front of screens than those from affluent households (3h48 versus 1h52).
Furthermore, the screen time gap by income, race and ethnicity has widened considerably. In 2011, this gap was only 40 minutes a day; in 2017, it had risen to 1h39; in 2020, it reaches 1h564. Yet, for every hour the television is on, parent-child interactions fall by an average of 52 minutes, according to a large study carried out in 2006 on 1,712 American children5.
As for the toys available to the child, the differences between social backgrounds are also massive. Not because toys would necessarily be lacking in disadvantaged families, but because the adults who are physically and psychologically available to accompany the child in discovering the world are often less present there. Yet accompaniment plays a decisive role in the effects of screen exposure: it can soften the consequences or, on the contrary, amplify the child’s loneliness in front of the images. Where a single mother on a modest income sometimes has no choice but to leave her child in front of the television, more affluent parents can turn to childcare to take over. Moreover, children from advantaged backgrounds can be encouraged in their choice of the type of screen they watch. Thus a study of children aged 9 to 13 shows no difference in screen time between those from an affluent family and those from a modest one (notably for activities other than television), but a difference in the type of use: children from advantaged backgrounds use screens more for educational purposes and skills development, while children from modest backgrounds use them more for recreational purposes.
Influence of living conditions on adolescents’ practices
The social network of children from working-class backgrounds is digitally smaller, and above all more homogeneous, which ensures lower productivity of later uses, since it is diversity that guarantees productive use. Children from working-class backgrounds also tend more to activate strong close ties rather than new encounters. In other words, for them these networks are less a tool for opening up than a space confirming a social place assigned by affinity ties and shared tastes.
In general, adolescents from disadvantaged backgrounds are more negatively affected by the use of digital technologies6. Economic precariousness increases the risk of problematic social media use at an individual level, while family relationships and a healthy lifestyle protect against it. A comparison of practices across territories has also shown that inequalities in education, the adoption of secular values (that is, the abandonment of religious practices) and inequalities between the sexes are predictors of an increased national risk of problematic screen use.
The existence of family rules around digital use
The 2024 Elfe study shows that having meals without television is associated with better verbal reasoning scores at two years, as well as higher cognitive performance at three and a half, then at five. In sum, one of the recommendations I put forward as early as 2008 is today confirmed by several large-scale studies: it is essential to talk with children about what they see and do with screens, and the meal taken without screens is a privileged moment for this.
Finally, the children best able to protect themselves from the risks of digital technology are those who are informed about how algorithms are designed to keep them engaged ever longer, to extract ever more personal data from them and to make them buy ever more real or virtual items. Yet, here again, social disparities are considerable: parents who are not capable of acquiring this expertise are obviously unable to pass it on to their children.
S.T.
- BRUSHE, M. E., LYNCH, J. W., MELHUISH, E., REILLY, S., MITTINTY, M. N. & BRINKMAN, S. A. (2023). Objectively measured infant and toddler screen time: Findings from a prospective study. SSM – Population Health, 22, 101395. ↩︎
- The Common Sense Census: Media Use by Kids Age Zero to Eight, Common Sense Media, 2020. https://www.commonsensemedia.org/sites/default/files/research/report/2020_zero_to_eight_census_final_web.pdf (accessed 29/04/2026). ↩︎
- The income thresholds used in this report are: for low incomes, less than $30,000/year; for high incomes, more than $75,000/year. ↩︎
- These same figures (3h48 / 1h52) were repeated and confirmed in the Common Sense Census 2025 with a low-income threshold raised to $50,000/year. https://www.commonsensemedia.org/sites/default/files/research/report/2025-common-sense-census-web-2.pdf ↩︎
- VANDEWATER, E. A., BICKHAM, D. S. & LEE, J. H. (2006). Time Well Spent? Relating Television Use to Children’s Free-Time Activities. Pediatrics, 117(2), e181–e191. ↩︎
- LU, Z. (2026). Mapping adolescent problematic social media use patterns across 41 countries/regions: A multilevel latent class analysis with social determinants. Addictive Behaviors, 172, 108523. ↩︎
