Junior high schoolers spend nearly 40 hours a week online: Survey

Taipei, Aug. 26 (CNA) Taiwanese junior high school students spend an average of nearly 40 hours online each week, while nearly a third have encountered artificial intelligence (AI)-related online safety issues, according to a Child Welfare League Foundation (CWLF) survey released Wednesday.

The 2026 survey on mobile phone and internet use among Taiwanese seventh- to ninth-graders was conducted between April 27 and May 31, collecting 11,920 valid responses.

The foundation said the findings highlighted three alarming trends: children are going online at younger ages, spending more time online and facing growing online safety threats.

At a press conference, Lee Hong-wen (李宏文), deputy director of the CWLF's Policy Development Department, said 91.6 percent of junior high school students own a personal smartphone, while the average age at which children receive their first phone has dropped to 9.98 years, down from 10.8 years in previous surveys.

CWLF data show that students spent an average of 38.4 hours online a week in 2026 -- up from 27.2 hours before the COVID-19 pandemic and approaching the length of a standard 40-hour workweek.

Weekly internet use surged to 47.2 hours during the pandemic because of online learning before declining, but has gradually risen again in recent years, Lee said.

The survey also found that 20.1 percent of respondents had experienced potentially harmful situations online, including cyberbullying (12.4 percent), requests to provide personal information (11.9 percent), unwanted sexually explicit messages (7.5 percent) and explicit images (5.1 percent).

Meanwhile, 31.4 percent of students said they or their classmates had encountered AI-related safety issues.

Among them, 15.1 percent reported classmates using generative AI to create fake photos or videos of fellow students as pranks, while 4.1 percent had been exposed to AI-generated violent or pornographic content and 2.5 percent had seen AI-generated pornographic images depicting classmates, Lee said.

Although those figures appear relatively low, they suggest that tens of thousands of junior high school students nationwide have been exposed to deepfakes, he added.

The survey also tested students' ability to identify AI-generated fake news images. Only 31.8 percent correctly recognized the images as fake, while 15.5 percent accepted them as genuine without question.

Parental oversight also appeared limited, with 53.5 percent of respondents saying their parents imposed no restrictions on smartphone use, either in terms of screen time or when and where they could use their smartphones.

At the same time, two-thirds of students (66.6 percent) said they had argued with their parents over smartphone use, mainly because of excessive screen time, disrupted daily routines or declining academic performance.

Given that social media has become an integral part of young people's lives, the CWLF urged parents to delay giving children their first smartphone for as long as practical and establish clear rules on smartphone and internet use together with their children.

It also advised parents to ensure minors register for social media accounts using their real age and strengthen digital literacy to help protect children from online harm.