Media Usage Statistics for Young People

My big learning experience from today happened while reading some staggering statistics about what and how much media young people are exposed to each day and for how long. You can read it yourself if you want at http://kff.org/other/generation-m-media-in-the-lives-of/

Here are the highlights that I thought were interesting:

“A substantially higher proportion of girls than boys watch situation comedies, and a substantially higher proportion of boys than girls watch sports” (Roberts, 2010, p. 26).

“Screen media [is] important to U.S. children. Average TV exposure among 8- to 18-year-olds exceeds three hours daily, and when all screen media are combined, average daily exposure climbs to 41⁄4 hours” (p. 23).

“The average daily time devoted to all leisure reading by 8- to 18-year-olds is 43 minutes, of which more than half is devoted to books (23 minutes) and a quarter to magazines (14 minutes). The remaining six minutes are spent with newspapers” (p. 26).

What a contrast between the amount of time spent reading vs. watching TV!

“Kids with college-educated parents spend substantially more time reading than those whose parents completed no more than high school” … "However, girls devote significantly more time than boys to books (28 minutes vs. 19 minutes)”... “U.S. kids average 13⁄4 hours per day with music media, with the time almost equally divided between radio and various recorded media (tapes, CDs, MP3s)” (p. 27).

“Rap/Hip Hop account for most of adolescent music listening: on any given day, 65% of junior and senior high school kids reporting listening — over twice the portion that listens to any other single type of music” (p. 28).

“Games account for 19 minutes of computer time daily, followed by instant messaging (17 minutes), and visiting Web sites (14 minutes)” (p. 30).

“U.S. kids spend 49 minutes daily playing video games of one kind or another, with console games garnering roughly twice the amount of time as handheld games” (p. 31).

“Boys spend almost three times as much time as girls playing video games (1:12 vs. 0:25)” (p. 32).

The average amount of time a young person uses media (including multiple devices at the same time) is 6:21 (p. 36). Yikes! That is a lot!

“The end result of combining time spent with computer games and video games into a measure of total interactive gaming is to reveal that interactive games consume more than an hour daily of U.S. 8- to 18-year- olds’ time” (p. 32,33).

(p. 38)

Roberts, D.F., Foehr, U.G., & Rideout, V. (2010). Generation M2: Media in the Lives of 8-18 Year-olds. Kaiser Family Foundation. Retrieved June 25, 2013 from http://kaiserfamilyfoundation.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/8010.pdf