Young children average 48 minutes a day on mobile devices, up from five minutes in 2011, according to The Common Sense Census: Media Use by Kids Age Zero to Eight.
Overall, however, kids’ screen time hasn’t increased. It’s just shifted to phones and tablets. “Children 8 and under average two-and-a-quarter hours a day with screen media, almost exactly the same amount they devoted to screens in 2011,” the study found.
Mobile devices are now just as common as televisions in family homes, notes writes Anya Kamenetz on NPR. Ninety-five percent of families have a mobile device and 42 percent of young children have their own tablet.
. . . 42 percent of parents say the TV is on “always” or “most of the time” in their home, whether anyone is watching or not. Research has shown this so-called “background TV” reduces parent-child interaction, which in turn can hurt language development.
On a positive note, she writes, “young children are still being read to by their parents about 30 minutes a day.”