November 2013
Sachiko Nakano
The Public Opinion Research Division of the NHK Broadcasting Culture Research Institute annually conducts the “Rating Survey on Young Children’s TV Viewing.” As the survey revealed that young children’s TV viewing time had been decreasing over a long period of time, the “Children’s Time Use Survey” was conducted in March 2013, for the first time in ten years, with an attempt to understand the change in the time use and media use of young children.
The results of the latest Children’s Time Use Survey also show that both the ratio of doers of TV viewing and the average viewing time per child have decreased from the level of the previous 2003 survey, both on Monday (weekday) and on Sunday (holiday). In particular, Monday marked notable declines, with the ratio of doers having decreased by 10% and the average viewing time per child by more than 30 minutes, which was the largest amount of change found among activities covered in this survey. The decline was in large part due to the increase of parents (mainly mothers) who are relatively old and/or work full-time, which heightened the proportion of daycare children among the entire young children surveyed. Compared to ten years ago, the average time a child spends at daycare center on Monday has increased, up to more than 9 hours. As more children stay at daycare center for longer hours, their free time to watch television or play at home has greatly decreased. Besides, the recent trend among young children across the board is to “go to bed and get up early,” and the number of children who finish watching television earlier at night has increased.
On the contrary, regarding the recorded programs/videos, the ratio of doers and the average viewing time per child have increased on Sunday although no change was observed on Monday. By hours, the recorded programs/video use has increased between early evening and night on Monday and Sunday, which suggests a possibility that a part of evening TV viewing has been replaced by video viewing. Similarly, TV viewing time of the parents, who were also surveyed along with their children, has drastically decreased, which is probably affecting young children’s TV viewing behavior.