Romanian teenagers spend seven hours a day in front of a monitor, says UNICEF study

The Ministry of Youth and Sports and UNICEF has presented yesterday a study regarding Romanian teenagers who spend an average of seven hours a day doing activities such as watching television, listening to the radio, surfing the internet or playing video games. According to the study, 96% of teenagers watch television daily and 50% of them spend over three hours on this activity instead of socializing, studying, playing outside or doing sports. The same study presents the fact that 88% of teenagers use the internet for 3.37 hours a day.

Also, the study illustrates their interest in social media, with only 16% arguing that they don’t use social networks. More than 50% are using social media to get in touch with friends and only 1% uses the modern channels to inform themselves about the risks of using alcohol or drugs.

According to the study, they begin to be sexually active around the age of 15. On average, teenagers start being sexually active at the age of 15 and a half. Sexually active teenagers had an average of 2.3 partners and 68% of them had a stable partner. The study shows that teenagers are generally well informed on HIV, but a very important percentage represents the frequency of “I don’t know/no answer” – between 24% and 39% .

Moreover, almost 4% of Romanian teenagers have already experimented some type of drug (5.4% of over-14 teenagers) while 42% of them have consumed alcohol at least once and 23% have smoked at least once.

The quantitative research was conducted on a sampling of girls and boys of the total population, with a margin of error of +/- 3.9% and a confidence level of 95%. According to INS (the National Institute of Statistics), there are approximately 2,012,709 teenagers aged between 10 and 18, representing 9.43% of the country’s total population.