As featured in The Times, Infinite Scroll is our new report on what children’s lives on TikTok actually look like – and what it means for young people growing up in the age of algorithmically driven short-form video.

A significant proportion of childhood is now spent scrolling through short-form video. Yet almost no one has systematically looked at what that experience actually looks like.

This report shows you TikTok through the eyes of a child. Drawing on granular app usage data, TikTok’s own watch history data exported under GDPR, screen recordings and in-home interviews with 23 children aged 14-16, we built the most detailed picture yet of what children’s lives on TikTok actually look like.

The children in this study averaged 1 hour 41 minutes on TikTok every day – with some spending closer to a quarter of their waking hours on the platform – that is, assuming they sleep for eight hours, which many of them don’t because they’re also scrolling during the night. Many described spending longer than they intended. Several, unprompted, used the word “addicted.”

TikTok is where most children currently go to scroll. But the features shaping this experience – infinite scroll, algorithmically personalised short-form video – are not unique to TikTok. Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook – even Spotify and Netflix have found that the infinite scroll keeps people swiping for hours.

What fills those hours, who benefits from children’s time and attention, and what children themselves think about it – is what this report sets out to answer.