Kids Spend Almost 40 Hours Using Media

The typical American child spends an average of more than 38 hours a week — nearly five and a half hours a day — consuming media outside of school, according to a major national study.

The Kaiser Family Foundation study - Kids & Media @ The New Millennium - examined media use among a nationally representative sample of more than 3,000 children ages 2-18, including more than 600 who completed detailed media use diaries. The study included children's use of television, computers, video games, movies, music and print media.

"Watching TV, playing video games, listening to music and surfing the Internet have become a full-time job for the typical American child," said Drew Altman, president of the Kaiser Family Foundation. "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 also found that many parents are not exercising much control over their children's media use: among kids eight and older, two-thirds (65 percent) have a TV in their bedroom and say the TV is usually on during meals in their home, and nearly that many (61 percent) say their parents have set no rules about TV watching. Parents watch TV with their kids in this age range just 5 percent of the time. Nearly one out of every four kids in this age group (24 percent) spends more than five hours a day watching TV.

While the study confirms that electronic media dominate young people's time, it also indicates that reading for pleasure is still a staple in most kids' lives. More than eight in 10 kids (82 percent) will read for fun each day, averaging nearly three quarters of an hour a day (excluding time spent reading in school or for homework).

The study is based on a nationally representative sample of 3,155 children ages 2-18, including more than 2,000 written questionnaires completed by children 8 and older, more than 1,000 in-home interviews with parents of 2-7 year-olds, and more than 600 week-long media use diaries maintained by parents (for 2-7 year olds) or kids (for 8-18 year-olds).

To order a copy of the full study (publication #1536), executive summary (#1535), or appendices (#1537) on which this release is based, call the Kaiser Family Foundation's publication request line at 800-656-4533, or visit the Kaiser Web site.

For more on kids and media, visit "Children Becoming Media Zombies."

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