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Kids spend 38 hours weekly watching, zapping, reading
Thursday, November 18, 1999 By Karen MacPherson, Post-Gazette National Bureau
WASHINGTON -- American children spend nearly a full work week outside of school -- 38 hours over seven days -- watching TV, movies and videos, playing on the computer, or reading, according to a landmark study on children's media use released yesterday.
The study by the Kaiser Family Foundation shows that children aged 2-18 spend an average of 5 1/2 hours a day "consuming" media, including two hours and 45 minutes watching TV. Kids 8 and older spend even more time in front of the tube -- nearly 6 3/4 hours a day.
Designed to give policymakers perspective on how media violence affects children, the Kaiser study claims to be the first to examine the full pattern of media use among a large, nationally representative sample of American youth. More than 3,100 children -- or their parents, in the case of preschoolers -- were surveyed.
"Watching TV, playing video games, listening to music and surfing the Internet have become a full-time job for the typical American child," said foundation president Drew Altman. "This study really underscores the importance of paying attention to the messages and the information kids are getting from the media, both good and bad."
The study found that many parents do not control their children's media use. Among kids 8 and older, most say their parents have set no rules for watching TV; two-thirds say they have a TV in their bedroom and that the TV is usually on during meals. Parents watch TV with kids in this age range just 5 percent of the time.
Even the youngest kids dedicate a big chunk of time to media use. Kids aged 2-7 spend an average of 3 1/2 hours a day using media; one in three has a TV in his bedroom. More than a third of their parents say the TV is on in their homes "most of the time."
Children aged 8-13 spend more time watching TV, videos and movies, playing on the computer and reading than children in any other age group. One in four in this age group spend more than five hours a day watching TV.
Electronic media is highly accessible to all age groups, with 88 percent of American homes having more than one TV set in 1999, compared with 35 percent in 1970.
Boys and girls spend roughly the same amount of time on media, but boys tend to prefer TV and video games, while girls listen to more music.
Black and Hispanic children of all income groups spend significantly more time using media, especially television, than white children. Black and Hispanic children spend an average of six hours daily with media, much of it in front of the television, versus five hours for white children.
While watching TV, videos and movies is the top choice for children, they also read for fun an average of 45 minutes a day, surpassing the 20-30 minutes that many educators recommend as a daily minimum. Still, time spent with books, magazines and newspapers is dwarfed by time exposed to electronic media.
Surprisingly, children spend a relatively small amount of time each day using computers, despite widespread access to them. Children aged 2-18 spend an average of a half-hour daily using computers, including 13 minutes at school.
The study also found that schools help close the "digital divide" between households with and without computers. Children from middle- and high-income households more frequently use computers at home, but at school just as many kids from low-income families use computers, about a third.
Victoria Rideout, director of the Kaiser Program on Entertainment Media and Public Health, said she was most surprised by the "sheer amount of time kids spend consuming media," and by how few parents exercise oversight despite Kaiser surveys in which parents display great concern about the impact of media, especially television, on their kids.
"Given that, it's surprising that so many American children have televisions in their rooms, that the TV is on most of the time in 42 percent of children's homes and that the TV is on during meals in 58 percent of children's homes."
Rideout recommended that parents get televisions, computers and other types of electronic media out of their children's bedrooms and limit the amount of time their kids use them.
Interestingly, the study showed that children who spend the most time with media are the "least contented." Rideout cautioned that the finding was relative, since most children report that they have lots of friends, are happy at school, get along well with their parents, don't get into trouble a lot, and are not often bored, sad or unhappy.
Yet "high" media users, children who spend more than 10 1/2 hours a day using media, scored significantly lower on the contentedness index developed by the study than children who use less media.
"We controlled for other factors, such as income, race, age and family composition, and still found that ... indicators of discontent are strongly associated with high media use. We still can't say one thing causes the other, however," Rideout said.
In a possible harbinger of things to come, most children said they prefer computers to TV if they're forced to choose.
The Kaiser Family Foundation describes itself as an "independent national health care philanthropy" and is not associated with Kaiser Permanente or Kaiser Industries.
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