Commonsense Media suggests that television remains dominant in terms of the number of hours consumed by the zero to eight year old group. To give a perspective on this, children under 1 watch more than two-times as much TV and videos as they do reading books or being read to.
It’s not too surprising that reading is an after-thought given that, according to the data, 47% of the 5 to 8 year olds have a television in their bedrooms.
There are some interesting differences due to income, such as low-income children are likely to have a television (98%) and watch more educational programming (26% low income kids often watch educational programming) versus 17% for high income kids). Higher income children spend less time with media (music, reading & screen media) at 2:47 per day versus 3:34 for lower income children. More striking is that upper income children have fewer TVs in their bedrooms (20%) as compared to lower income children (64%).
They multitask, as evidenced by the fact that approximately 51% of 5 to 8 year olds simultaneously use multiple media at least once in a while.
A good infographic compiled by AdWeek can be found at this link:
http://www.adweek.com/files/DATA-childs-play-02b.jpg
The report is based on a sample size of 1,384 parents of children 0 to 8 years old, including an over-sample of African-American and Hispanic parents.
Zero to Eight: Children’s Media Use in America | Common Sense Media
and the full report can be found at:
http://www.commonsensemedia.org/sites/default/files/research/zerotoeightfinal2011.pdf
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