Children’s screen time in Brazil declines slightly amid safety concerns

Social media use among elementary school students is down, fewer children aged 10 to 13 are using the internet or own a mobile phone, and concerns over privacy and safety are on the rise, according to the 2025 National Continuous Household Sample Survey on internet and TV access and mobile phone ownership (Pnad TIC), released Thursday (2) by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE). Screen ‘pandemic’ in childhood hurts job skills Supreme Court adds ‘reasonable doubt’ safeguard for platforms Young people feel unhappy after consuming social media content Internet use among Brazilians aged 10 to 13 rose from 77.5% in 2019 to 84.9% in 2024 in the wake of the pandemic but slipped slightly to 84.4% last year. Among the population aged 10 and older overall, the upward trend held: internet use climbed from 79.4% in 2019 to 89.2% in 2024 and 90.5% in 2025. A similar pattern emerged in mobile phone ownership among 10-to-13-year-olds. Ownership in that age group stood at 46.8% in 2019, the year before the pandemic, rose to 56.7% in 2024, then dipped to 55.2% last year—the only age group that saw phone ownership decline between 2024 and 2025. Among children in that age bracket who didn’t own a phone, the most common reason cited in 2025 was concern about privacy or safety, mentioned by 32% of respondents—well above the 11.8% who cited the same reason across the population aged 10 and older as a whole. IBGE also looked at social media use and found that, last year, students (86.7%) used social media slightly more than non-students (84.4%). Even so, usage among students has been declining, down from 87.5% in 2024. That drop shows up across both public and private elementary schools. Among public school students, social media use fell from 79.2% in 2022 to 76.7% in 2024 and 74% in 2025. Private school students saw a similar slide, from 80.1% in 2022 to 76.9% in 2024 and 73.5% in 2025. The decline comes amid mounting warnings about technology’s toll on young people’s concentration, mental health and learning. It also coincides with 2025 being the first year nationwide legal limits on phones in schools took effect. “There’s been growing concern in recent years about children’s exposure to social media and the internet. In 2025, the law restricting children’s phone use in schools came into force. This year, the Digital Child and Adolescent Statute also took effect, after debate began last year. All of this may be shaping the numbers we’re seeing,” said Gustavo Geaquinto Fontes, the IBGE official who led the survey. The federal law, in effect since early 2025, restricts phone use during classes, recess and breaks in both public and private schools nationwide, though exceptions apply for educational use with teacher authorization, and for accessibility, health or safety needs. Beyond phones and social media, IBGE also found more Brazilian households with flat-screen TVs, over-the-air reception, streaming services, computers and tablets. The survey covered 80 million permanent private households, up from 78.3 million in 2024. Last year, 75.1 million households (93.9%) had a television, while 4.9 million (6.1%) did not. Television ownership has kept growing in absolute terms—up from 73.5 million households (also 93.9%) in 2024, and from 65 million households, or 97.2% of the total, back in 2016. Even as overall TV ownership rose, the survey found households continuing to upgrade their sets and services. Among households with a television, 95% had a flat-screen model in 2025, the highest share since 2021; in absolute numbers, that’s up 4%, from 68.6 million households in 2024 to 71.4 million in 2025. Households receiving over-the-air signals also grew, adding 907,000 to reach 64.5 million last year, a 1.4% increase. Pay-TV subscriptions, meanwhile, kept falling in both percentage and absolute terms—17.7 million households had pay TV last year, the lowest since the survey began in 2016. Paid streaming, by contrast, kept gaining ground: the share of TV-owning households with a paid streaming subscription rose from 43.4% in 2024 to 44.4% in 2025, an increase of nearly 1.5 million households.