The article claims nearly 4.5 hours per day. I find that hard to believe... I don't know any children (in my admittedly biased sample) that watch more than an hour or two.
I know families who literally leave a tv on for the kids 24/7. It's on during meals, it's on during the day, it's there as they are getting ready for bed. Just constantly on and droning away.
I cannot understand that behavior. Even an hour or two a day seems like a lot for a kid to me.
Not suprising to be honest. In middleschool and highschool I would stay up even later. Wake up for school at 7, get there by 8, class till 3, after school activity till 5 or 6, done with dinner by 7, two hours or so of half assed work (takes longer the more half assed), then 9 o clock would signal that the rest of the day belonged solely to me and my interests, and I would be on the laptop or play video games untill whenever I got tired. Usually I'd clock around 5-6 hours a night of sleep during the week, and make it up by sleeping close to 10 on the weekends.
College set me straight with sleeping, though. I was able to schedule classes no earlier than 10:30, and if I went out late into the night and got hammered I could sleep in on a whim without consequence. I was also able to have nap time again. Definitely struggled getting sleep with a full time job now, but its been getting better. Everyone where I work has their own schedules. Couple of us are here at 7, me and others don't get in till 10-10:30. Sometimes I work till 7, most of the time I leave by 5, and sometimes I leave at 3. Rigidity kills the soul.
I probably watched more than that growing up so ymmv. I always wonder how they collect statistics like these. Questionnaires / self reporting by parents?
They install tracking boxes in the TV's of a sample of the population. This is done with the family authorization and often they get compensated for it. There's a lot of work that goes into choosing the sample so it's representative of the total population.
