The study, which was carried out by media watchdog Ofcom, discovered that children under the age of five spend an hour and 16 minutes online per day, on average. Factor in gaming and television and that time shoots up to four hours and 16 minutes.
But that’s not all: one-fifth of children ages eight through 12 are on social media, despite the “ban” for those under age 13.
The results of the Ofcom annual report are based on 2,000 interviews. Many parents admitted that they had “lost control” of their children’s online habits, while children admitted that they would often rather watch online videos than spend time with friends because it’s “too much effort.”
Furthermore, while children often use multiple screens at once, the hours they spend on each device were counted separately for the purposes of the report.
As a whole, the study concluded that “children were watching people on YouTube pursuing hobbies that they did not do themselves or had recently given up offline.”
For more information about the results of the report, click here.
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