Shocker: Screen Time Is Way Up for Kids Since COVID-19 First Hit
Common Sense Media reviews content meant for children to help the adults in their lives choose what they'll engage with online, including games and videos. Thus it behooves the organization to know how kids across different demographics are consuming that content. It commissioned a survey of 1,306 tweens (ages 8 to 12) and teens (ages 13 to 18) for a week in 2021, to see how much things have changed regarding kids and screen time.
The results aren't much of a surprise. Screen time across the board is up 20% since the start of the pandemic. Boys consume more than girls; Black and Hispanic/Latino kids consume more than white kids; those from middle-income ($35,000 to $99,000 per year) and lower-income households (under $35,000) consume more than kids from more affluent homes.
The top thing kids' eyeballs seek are videos: Video-watching has gone up by 23 minutes per day for teens (from 59 to 82 minutes). Thirty-two percent of teens "can't live without" YouTube, specifically.
For tweens, social media use is higher, with 18% using it every day compared with 13% in 2019.
Other favorite screen-time pastimes are gaming and browsing websites. Less popular are actually creating content and reading ebooks, online articles, and so on.
You can see more about these findings in the infographic above, including the percentages of PCs in the homes based on income. The full report will be released on the Common Sense Media website on March 23.
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