Children in Türkiye spend an average of 4.5 hours on their phones, while the time spent by children worldwide is 4.7 hours, highlighted the research of a location and activity tracking application, Find My Kids, for children and families that examined the data from the beginning of 2023.

According to the research conducted by Find My Kids – a tracking application used in 170 countries around the world – some children in Türkiye wait until midnight to play games and use social media applications on their phones.

Offering advanced security features while allowing parents to see the live locations of their children and monitor their activities, Find My Kids also examined children's mobile application usage habits. The research was carried out anonymously evaluating the data of 50,000 users from Türkiye and 1 million from the world, randomly selected among the users of Find My Kids aged between 7-18.

Find My Kids country manager Neşen Yücel provided information on the subject and said that the research revealed results that parents should carefully examine. "The effects of social media, video applications and games on the development and safety of our children are on the agenda of all parents. Our research adds remarkable dimensions to the debate on this issue," Yücel said.

"The data reveals 49% of children in Türkiye play games on their phones between 11 p.m. and 4 a.m. at night. Similarly, 60% of children use social media apps on their phones at the same time. It is also remarkable that 7% of children use applications that are not suitable for their age group and are over the age of 18 years," she explained.

Acknowledging the efficient GPS tracking feature of Find My Kids, Yücel said that parents can see the location of their children in real-time, as well as easily supervise which application and how much they use on their phones. Yücel underlined that the application maximizes parental control possibilities, helping families feel more secure and take action when necessary, both in the real and in the virtual world.

Children, who spend an average of 66 minutes a day in each of the four social media applications in the top 10 most widespread social media apps also spend an average of 65 minutes per single game session for mobile games, the Find My Kids research revealed.

The most used social media applications by children in our country are YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and TikTok. In-game applications, the ranking begins with Roblox, PUBG Mobile, Brawl Stars, Minecraft and FIFA Mobile. Netflix usage time on mobile phones of children who want to watch movies, series or cartoons reached an average of 46 minutes per day.

According to the Find my Kids data, a similar picture is seen around the world as well. "Half of the 10 most-used applications by children are social media sites, and the other half are mobile games. In the social media category, YouTube, TikTok, Likee, YouTube Kids and Wattpad are among the most used whereas in the game category, Roblox, Free Fire, PUBG Mobile, Genshin Impact and Call of Duty are among the most used mobile applications.''

Over 3 million parents in 170 countries use the Find My Kids app.