Romanian teenagers spend an average of seven hours every day watching TV, listening to radio, surfing the net or playing video games, a recent study shows.

The study by UNICEF and the Youth and Sports Ministry also found that more boys use social media that girls – 93 to 88 percent, while urban teens are more active on social media compared to rural teens – 91 to 77 percent.

The majority of teenagers watch TV daily and half of them spend more than three hours watching TV rather than socializing, studying, playing or exercising.

The majority of teens also use the internet daily, for about 3.3 hours.

Only 16 percent of teenagers said they don't use social media. Around half of those who use social media do it to stay in touch with friends.

The Romanian teenagers' sex life usually starts at 15, and around a quarter of the boys who were included in the study said they already started their sex life. In comparison, only 11 percent of the girls said they started their sex life.

The study found that sexually active teenagers had an average of 2.3 partners, and almost 70 percent of them had a stable partner. However, only half of those in a stable relationship said they used the condom in the last month to prevent a pregnancy.

That finding, particularly, should prompt better health education, with a focus on sexually transmitted diseases, according to the study initiators.

There are around 2 million teenagers in Romania, aged between 10 and 18, making them around 10 percent of the country's population.

editor@romania-insider.com