Monitor Report 2023

A comprehensive annual report focused on children and young people's media consumption, purchasing habits, attitudes and activities

With the third UK national lockdown fully lifted by early 2022, this year’s Monitor survey is the first fully post pandemic, with all schools open during fieldwork (Autumn 2022), and life getting back to some sense of normality for most young people.

For now they can put worries about Covid-19 behind them, but it is clear that worries about the cost of living crisis are not far from their thoughts.

17-18 year olds

This year, after several years of data collection, we have included the views of 17-18 year olds for the first time.

Young people this age in England are now expected to carry on with some form of education, whether this is staying in full-time education, for example at a college, starting an apprenticeship or traineeship, or spending 20 hours or more a week working or volunteering while in part-time education or training.

TikTok and YouTube wars

This year, YouTube has finally been unseated as children’s favourite website or app.

YouTube has been their top favourite for the last ten years, since 2013 when it replaced Facebook at the top of the list.

Snapchat has been a close contender with YouTube over the years, but interest peaked in 2017 and has declined ever since.

So this year, TikTok becomes their new top favourite, as it just nudges ahead in popularity.

Whilst more children claim to use YouTube than TikTok (more than half say they use YouTube every day), YouTube is becoming more functional and therefore the excitement of using it is wearing off.

The key area where TikTok excels over YouTube for children is the ease of use - compared with YouTube, far more children using TikTok say they don’t have to think about what to watch, it just recommends for them, and the main gripe about YouTube (adverts) is nowhere near as worrisome for TikTok users.

A shift away from favourite programmes

This year, recognising that children and young people are less likely to refer to ‘TV’ and ‘programmes’ when thinking about what they like to watch, the publisher reworded the questions to the more general ‘What are some of the things you're watching in your free time at the moment’.

Most could still name something they are watching, but mentions of specific programmes only really start to appear among older children, with most choosing to mention providers such as YouTube and Netflix, plus social media such as TikTok as the ‘channel’ they are watching most of at the moment.

Emotional stability

This year there seems to have been a drop in the number of children and young people saying they feel stressed about school work, worried or anxious, that they don’t look good enough, that they are not good enough, or that the way they look holds them back, and in most cases agreement with the list of statements returns to proportions last seen in 2020, after a spike in 2021, when the UK entered its third national lockdown and the future remained uncertain.

Generally speaking, children and young people are typically more likely to say they ever experience these sorts of emotions as they get older, and girls remain more likely than boys to say they ever experience feelings like this.

Despite fewer registering negative emotions, there is a small but growing proportion of young people who say they are not happy most of the time, especially among older girls.