The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) has released new research examining the viewing habits of Australian children in a multiplatform environment.

The research offers much needed context and evidence to the current review of Australian and children’s content. 

We sometimes hear people say that “TV is dead” and “kids aren’t watching kids shows anymore” and “they’re all watching viewer generated content on YouTube.” 

The ACMA research demonstrates that these comments are simply not true.

Like all of us, children are certainly watching content on a variety of different devices – televisions, tablets, computers and phones.  Time spent watching television since 2005 has decreased by 30 minutes a day, but the time that children spending watching children’s programs has actually increased. Children are viewing an average of 10.6 hours a week of screen content, of which 6.7 hours a week is children’s content.  (If the amount of time spent watching screen content seems like a lot to you, consider how much screen content adults watch!)

The survey results implied that children watch programs for general viewing (like Masterchef or The Voice) with their families, but perhaps watch children’s content alone.

And while children do watch a lot of content on YouTube (the survey results do not drill down into what they are actually watching on YouTube), they actually spend more time on the combined platforms of free to air television, SVOD services like Netflix and catch up services like iView.  This tells us that they watch viewer generated content in addition to rather than instead of long or short form professionally produced content.

ABC2 remains the most popular children’s channel.

The research can be found here.

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