Here's a list of most popular media activities (In a typical day, percentage of 8- to 18-year-olds who spend more than an hour)

Listening to music - 44%
Watching TV - 66%
Reading - 19%
Playing video games - 22%
Using computers - 28 %


That's according to a report recently released by the Kaiser Family Foundation. They describe this report as ?publicly available, reliable, and objective data documenting the patterns and trends of media use among young people."

The report was based on a national sample of 3rd- to 12th graders (8?18 years old) and was conducted via anonymous written questionnaires of about 40 minutes in length, and a subset who completed a detailed seven-day diary of their media use, focuses in detail on media use the prior day.

Some of the key findings are:

Young people today live media saturated lives, spending an average of nearly 6.5 hours a day with media. In a week, that amount is the equivalent of a full-time job.

If we take into consideration the fact that they use more than one medium at a time, they are actually exposed to the equivalent of 8.5 hours a day of media content, packed into less than 6.5 hours of time.

TV and music top the charts, with young people spending an average of three hours a day watching TV, and about 13/4 hours a day listening to the radio or to CDs, tapes, or MP3 players.

Interactive media come next, with young people averaging just over one hour a day on the computer outside of schoolwork, and just under 50 minutes a day (playing video games). Reading is close behind, on books, magazines, or newspapers for something other than schoolwork.

For executive summary and carts click here.

Thats surprising, the media normally portray kids as being on the computer and playing video games all of the time. Maybe times have changed?

I'd be interested to know if any similar surveys have been conducted in the UK and it would be interesting to compare the results.

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