Recreation and the Use of Free Time - Television-watching Habits Of Young People

According to the ISR report Changes in Children's Time with Parents, collecting data about the activities children engage in is complicated because observation is the best way but it is expensive, time-consuming, and intrusive. Before 1997 there was only one study, the Time Use Longitudinal Panel Study, 1975–81, that contained nationally representative data on U.S. children's use of time. The 1997 Child Development Supplement to the Panel Study of Income Dynamics had parents maintain twenty-four-hour time diaries; researchers used these diaries to make comparisons between children's time use in 1981 and 1997.

The ISR report Changes in American Children's Time revealed that in 1997 children ages three to twelve spent 27% of their weekly time watching television, down from 30% in 1981. Television watching as a primary activity also declined by 23% during the period. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in National Youth Risk Behavior Survey: 1991–2003, Trends in the Prevalence of Physical Activity, reported that in 1999 42.8% of high schoolers watched three or more hours of television on an average school day; that percentage had declined to 38.2% in 2003. (See Table 9.2.)

While in general the amount of time children spent watching television declined in the 1980s and 1990s, television

TABLE 9.2

Television watching among high school students, by demographic characteristics, 2003
	Watched ≥3 hours/day of TV
Category	Female %	Male %	Total %
*For example, push-ups, sit-ups, or weightlifting on 3 of the 7 days preceding the survey to strengthen or tone their muscles.
†Run by their school or community groups during the 12 months preceding the survey.
§On an average school day.
**Non-Hispanic.
SOURCE: Adapted From "Table 56. Percentage of High School Students Who Did Strengthening Exercises, Played on One or More Sports Teams, and Who Watched Three or More Hours/Day of Television, by Sex, Race/Ethnicity, and Grade," in "Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance—United States, 2003," Surveillance Summaries, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, vol. 53, no. SS-02, May 21, 2004, http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/PDF/SS/SS5302.pdf (accessed September 16, 2004)
Race/ethnicity
White**	26.8	31.7	29.3
Black**	70.0	64.3	67.2
Hispanic	45.1	46.8	45.9
Grade
9	41.2	46.5	44.0
10	39.0	42.9	41.0
11	34.7	34.1	34.4
12	31.3	29.9	30.6
Total	37.0	39.3	38.2

watching varied significantly by age and race. Between 1982 and 1999 the percentage of nine-year-olds who watched at least six hours of television daily decreased from 26% to 19%. The percentage of thirteen-year-olds watching six or more hours of television daily fell from 16% to 12%. However, a greater proportion of seventeen-year-olds (7%) watched six or more hours of television daily in 1999 than in 1982 (6%). In all three age groups African-American children were more likely than white and Hispanic children to watch six or more hours of television each day. (See Figure 9.1.)

In A Child's Day: 2000 (U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Reports, P70–89, 2003), Terry A. Lugila outlined the three kinds of television rules a family might use to limit children's television watching: limits on the type of program children watched, rules governing how early or how late the television could be on, and limits on the number of hours children watched television. In 2000 85% of children older than three years lived in households where at least one rule limited their television watching: 89.9% of preschoolers, 92% of children age six to eleven, and 72.6% of children ages twelve to seventeen. (See Table 9.3.) Well over half of children ages three to five (64.4%) and children ages six to eleven (69%) lived in households with all three types of television rules; that percentage dropped to 41.7% of children ages twelve to seventeen.

The percentage of children living in families with television rules also varied by race/ethnicity and by the educational level of parents. Non-Hispanic white children were more likely to have television rules than African-American, Asian, or Hispanic children of any age. (See Table 9.3.) Parents were also more likely to impose television rules as their educational level went up.

The presence or absence of television rules was also correlated with the amount of times per week family members read to young children. In families where there were no television rules, 17.1% of three- to five-year-olds were not read to at all. (See Figure 9.2.) In contrast, in families with one or two television rules only 7.5% of three- to five-year-olds were not read to at all, and in families with all three types of rules, only 5.9% of preschoolers were not read to at all. The percentage of children who were read to seven or more times per week also went up in families with more television rules.