A new study from the Joan Ganz Cooney Center finds that while 2- to 4-year-olds spend 78 percent of their screen-media time with educational content, that figure drops to 39 percent among 5- to 7-year-olds and to 27 percent for 8- to 10-year-olds.
The research, “Learning at Home: Families’ Educational Media Use in America,” also found that children spend an average of 42 minutes a day watching educational television compared with five minutes each day with educational content on mobile devices and computers and just three minutes per day with educational video games.
The children of parents surveyed also read an average of 40 minutes per day, which includes 29 minutes with print, eight minutes on computers, and five minutes using e-readers and tablets.
The national survey of more than 1,500 parents is part of the center’s Families and Media Project.