How much time are your kids spending on gaming or social media?

If you ever attended a consumer research group with kids and teenagers as I did in the last weeks, you probably came out frightened by the number of hours kids actually spend on their mobile, social media platforms or PS4.

From 12-year-old, they can spend from 1 to 8 hours a day, with their PS4 or mobile in their bed, generally without their parents knowing what happens and wondering why they can't wake up in the morning or can't swallow their breakfast. The 2018 Ofcom report stating 20h per week for 12/15-year-olds is an average and probably hides huge variations. In the research groups with the parents, you never get those numbers. Parents always feel they have to present themselves as good, controlling parents, limiting their children mobile usage. The teenager groups were a great reality check. Parental controls are not very useful as most kids know how to break the code. ID control, especially with Netflix, is another option. But I've heard that a key asset for a boyfriend is to share his Netflix ID with his girlfriend!

Of course, we should be worried but the experience made me wonder: are parents really worried about it? To start with, most of us tend to forget what we actually did at 15: we watched a lot of TV, we were consuming a lot of alcohol if not worse, went out pretending we were sleeping at our friend's house ( and didn't). Statistics show that GenZs tend to drink less alcohol than the older generations or even feel uneasy with 'real-life' human interactions. I wonder if unconsciously, parents don't prefer to know their kids are safe at home and that the mobile is keeping them occupied.

Parents also recognised that they were not great role models. Like their kids, they check their mobile first thing in the morning and go to bed with it. What reassured me is the kids' own desire to control their usage after a while: ' I've started to spend more time with my real friends, people who are important to me, not my virtual friends' a wise 15-year-old girl confessed.

Also, if you are a marketer, apart from reality TV, you should really reconsider if you should use TV at all to reach them. None of these kids watched TV once they are 12 but they were influencers savvy, could recognise a product placement from a genuine review, could define the role of different medium, from Snapchat to Instagram or Tik Tok. And by the way, just forget Facebook - 'it's for old people'.

This research group really challenged my perception of what I should be doing from now on. Banning mobiles from bedrooms ( but will it actually work?). Spending more quality time in the evening to play, talk or read together ...if you can find the energy or manage to convince your 15-year-old who obviously prefer to be on her own in her bedroom. Or hope they will choose real human interactions or even a book once they realize the impact technology has on their life.