Teens and Youth

A projected 50.7 million pre-K-12 students will return to the classroom in U.S. public schools this fall. As the school year gets underway, read key findings about America’s students and their experiences.

Roughly half of U.S. teens say they spend too much time on their cellphones, and two-thirds of parents express concern over their teen’s screen time. But parents face their own challenges of device-related distraction.

YouTube, Instagram and Snapchat are the most popular online platforms among teens. Fully 95% of teens have access to a smartphone and 45% say they are online almost constantly.

The share of U.S. children living with an unmarried parent has more than doubled since 1968, jumping from 13% to 32% in 2017.

More than half of U.S. teens say they are worried about the possibility of a shooting happening at their school, with one-in-four saying they are very worried.

When Americans are asked why more students don’t pursue a degree in science, technology, engineering or math (STEM), they are most likely to point to the difficulty of these subjects, according to a new Pew Research Center survey. About half of adults (52%) say the main reason young people don’t pursue STEM degrees is they think these subjects are too hard.

About 57,800 minors in the U.S. ages 15 to 17 are married – or five of every 1,000 in that age group. But the rate of child marriage varies widely between states.

Almost all of the world’s nations have laws specifying at which age a couple can marry, and in most of these countries, those under the age of 18 are allowed to wed.

Changing diapers and arranging play dates is a world apart from running the carpool and helping with college applications.

Nearly six-in-ten U.S. Hispanics are Millennials or younger, making them the youngest major racial or ethnic group in the United States. In 2014, the median age of Hispanics was just 28 years.