Media has a more intense relationship with children today than at any time in past. Below are some quick facts. Read more about the influence of media on kids in Common Sense Media's  research and reports.

Media Consumption and Parental Oversight:

• Young children (kids 0-6) spend nearly 25 hours using screen media (watching TV or movies, playing on the computer).¹
• Kids 8-18 spend 44.5 hours per week watching TV, playing video games, IMing, listening to music, etc.² This is more time than they spend with their parents (17 hours) or at school (30 hours).
• 26% of kids 8-18 use more than one medium at a time.³
• 63% of kids 8-18 live in homes where the TV is on during most meals.⁴
• 36% of kids six and younger have a TV in their bedroom⁵ , compared to 68% of kids 8-18.⁶
• 53% of parents of children 8-18 years old have no rules about TV.⁷

Advertising/Marketing:

• The average American child sees 40,000 commercials, each year, on broadcast TV.⁸
• 80% of the TV commercials that kids see each year are for fast food, candy, cereal and toys.⁹
• An average of one food commercial is shown every five minutes during Saturday morning cartoons.¹⁰
• Advertisers spent more than $10 billion targeting children and youth though TV ads, coupons, contests, public relations promotions and packaging designed for children.¹¹

Violent Content:

• Nearly 2 out of 3 TV programs contained violence; averaging 6 violent acts per hour.¹²
• There are more than twice as many violent incidents in children's programming than in other types of programming. The average child who watches 2 hours of cartoons a day may see more than 10,000 violent acts a year.¹³

Sexual Content:

• Sexual content appears in 64% of TV all programs. Programs with sexual content average 4.4 scenes per hour.¹⁴
• Only 15% of programs that contain sexual content include messages about risks like sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) or unplanned pregnancy.¹⁵
• On average, music videos contain 93 sexual situations per hour, including 11 "hard core" scenes depicting behavior such as intercourse and oral sex.¹⁶

Race and Gender:

• Characters on primetime TV :¹⁷
  3% are Asian
  4% are Latino
  16% are African-American
  74% are Caucasian
• Characters in top-selling video games :¹⁸
  64% are male
  17% are female
  19% are not human (e.g. alien)

Media and Kids' Health:

• A preschooler's risk of obesity jumps 6% for every hour of TV watched per day, 31% if the TV is in their bedroom.¹⁹
• Teens who watch more than 1 hour of TV each day are four times more likely than other teens to commit aggressive acts in adulthood.²⁰
• In a study of 3rd and 4th graders, reducing TV and video game consumption to less than 1 hour a day can decrease verbal aggression by 50% and physical aggression by 40%.²¹
• 72% of teens think watching TV with a lot of sexual content influences their peers' behavior somewhat or a lot.²²
  
  
  

References:

¹Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. (2005). Generation M: Media in the lives of 8-18 year olds. Menlo Park, CA. ²Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. (2003). Zero to six: Electronic media in the lives of infants, toddlers and preschoolers. Menlo Park, CA. ³Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. (2005). Generation M: Media in the lives of 8-18 year olds. Menlo Park, CA. ⁴Ibid. ⁵Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. (2003). Zero to six: Electronic media in the lives of infants, toddlers and preschoolers. Menlo Park, CA. ⁶Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. (2005). Generation M: Media in the lives of 8-18 year olds. Menlo Park, CA. ⁷Ibid. ⁸Kunkel, D. (2001). Children and television advertising. Handbook of Children in the Media, eds. D. Singer and J. Singer. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. ⁹Ibid. ¹⁰Kotz, K. & Story, M. (1994).Food advertisements during children's Saturday morning television programming: Are they consistent with dietary recommendations. Journal of American Dietetic Association.. ¹¹Institute of Medicine. (2004). Preventing Childhood Obesity: Health in the Balance Fact Sheet. www.iom.edu. ¹²Henry J Kaiser Family Foundation. (2003). Fact sheet: TV violence. Menlo Park, CA. ¹³Henry J Kaiser Family Foundation. (2003). Fact sheet: TV Violence. Menlo Park, CA. ¹⁴Collins, R., et al. (2004). Watching sex on television predicts adolescent initiation of sexual behavior. Pediatrics. ¹⁵Ibid. ¹⁶Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood. Facts about marketing to kids. www.commericialfreechildhood.org. ¹⁷Children Now. (1999). A different world: Children's perceptions of race and class in the media. ¹⁸Henry J Kaiser Family Foundation. (2002). Fact sheet: Children and video games. Menlo Park, CA. ¹⁹Robinson, T.N. (2001). Effects of reducing television viewing on children's requests for tyos. Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics. ²⁰Henry J Kaiser Family Foundation. (2003). Fact sheet: TV violence. Menlo Park, CA. ²¹Ibid. ²²Henry J Kaiser Family Foundation. (2003). Sex on TV 3: Content and Context. Menlo Park, CA.