Portugal’s Kids Log More Screen Hours Than School Hours

Screens are winning ever larger chunks of Portuguese childhood, and the latest data show that YouTube and TikTok sit firmly at the top of the digital food-chain. A new report tracking the online habits of under-18s puts hard numbers on something many parents already suspected: in Portugal, children spend more time watching short videos than doing almost anything else outside school hours.

A snapshot for busy readers

A nationwide sample gathered during the first months of 2024 reveals that just over 27 percent of all app activity by Portuguese children occurs on YouTube, with TikTok trailing at 15 percent. Globally, YouTube also takes first place but WhatsApp—not TikTok—lands second.

Why foreign families should care

Portugal’s education system, social fabric and even the outdoor-centric culture often help newcomers limit their children’s screen time. Yet the report’s figures—six hours of daily screen exposure for 8- to 10-year-olds and nearly nine hours for pre-teens—suggest that Portuguese youngsters are hardly immune to the global trend. International parents planning a move to Lisbon, Porto or the Algarve will therefore face the same balancing act they may know from home, albeit in a country where public debate about children’s digital diet is still gaining steam.

The hard numbers behind the worry

Researchers aggregated anonymised data from tens of thousands of devices protected by parental-control software. They assigned every tap, swipe and view to a category. In Portugal the split came out as follows: video streaming 27.28 percent, short-form social video 15.05 percent, instant messaging 12 percent, casual gaming 9 percent and everything else under 7 percent each. Those proportions mirror last year’s lockdown-era dip but remain significantly higher than pre-pandemic baselines. The national Directorate-General for Education, which tracked device use during the 2020 confinement, has separately warned that over 29 percent of students increased their screen exposure by at least two hours a day—a habit that appears to have stuck.

What schools and regulators are doing

Lisbon’s Ministry of Education is drafting guidelines that would add digital-wellness modules to the citizenship curriculum as soon as the 2025 academic year. Separately, Brussels’ new Digital Services Act forces platforms to dial back algorithmic profiling for minors across the EU, including Portugal. Under the rules YouTube and TikTok must offer chronological feeds and make ad-targeting opt-in for anyone under 18. Enforcement, however, will largely rely on national watchdogs working with parent reports, meaning vigilance at home is still essential.

Practical tips for navigating the Portuguese digital landscape

For expatriate parents setting up new routines, local pediatricians recommend a few low-tech countermeasures: schedule after-school sports—prices at municipal clubs rarely top ten euros a month; leverage Portugal’s mild climate for evening park outings; and use the built-in screen-time dashboards that come free on Android and iOS, both of which now support Portuguese language reports. If language barriers complicate online safety conversations, note that most public libraries run free digital-literacy workshops in English.

Bottom line for newcomers

Children in Portugal are embracing the same apps that dominate screens around the world, but national quirks—earlier smartphone ownership and strong adoption of video-centric platforms—give those apps an even larger slice of the day. Families moving here should expect to negotiate boundaries early, plug into local outdoor culture and keep an eye on new European rules designed to take a bit of the edge off algorithmic temptation.

One-paragraph takeaway for the time-pressed

Online-video giants YouTube and TikTok account for nearly half of Portuguese children’s app time, pushing daily screen exposure to six-plus hours for younger kids and nine for pre-teens. A surge in AI chatbots, meme culture and a new game called Sprunki is intensifying that pull. Foreign parents relocating to Portugal will find the same tug-of-war they know from home, but can tap the country’s outdoor lifestyle, affordable sports clubs and emerging EU protections to keep screentime in healthier balance.