{
 "title": "Kids shows, games, books, and toys: what the 2025–2026 data show about young children",
 "description": "Kids shows, games, and books in data: kids 5–8 averaged 3 h 28 min of screens a day in 2024; Bluey led Nielsen's 2025 US streaming list. Sources for each.",
 "url": "https://raisingstoics.com/research/data/kids-shows-games-books-toys",
 "question": null,
 "measure": "Minutes per day",
 "unit": "minutes per day",
 "source": {
  "short": "Common Sense Census 0–8, 2025",
  "name": "Common Sense Media, The Common Sense Census: Media Use by Kids Zero to Eight, 2025, Key Table B (time spent with media, by activity and age, 2024)",
  "url": "https://www.commonsensemedia.org/sites/default/files/research/report/2025-common-sense-census-web-2.pdf",
  "license": "© Common Sense Media; figures cited with attribution",
  "licenseUrl": "https://www.commonsensemedia.org/research/the-2025-common-sense-census-media-use-by-kids-zero-to-eight"
 },
 "license": "© Common Sense Media; figures cited with attribution",
 "method": "The chart shows Common Sense Census 2025, Key Table B: average time spent in a typical day with each media activity, ages 5–8, as reported by parents in a nationally representative online survey (KnowledgePanel) of 1,578 US parents of children 0–8, conducted August 5–29, 2024; margin of error for the full sample ±2.9%. Values are published as hours:minutes; we converted them to minutes. Averages are across all children in the age group, including those who did not do the activity. Key Table B marks significant differences between age groups, not between activities, so the bars should not be read as a ranking. The report's wording on short videos is ambiguous: one passage describes the 22-minute average for ages 5–8 as among children who watch short videos; we show the value as printed in Key Table B. Reading rows are the report's \"Reading/being read to\" category, split into print and electronic. Activities under 4 minutes a day (podcasts, smart speakers, taking pictures, AI tools) are not charted. The tables below come from other sources, each labeled with source, year, sample, and measure; they are not comparable with the chart or with each other. We checked every figure against the original report, press release, or data page in October 2026. We left out figures we could not open at the source, including Ofcom's 2026 children's media report, Roblox experience rankings, and third-party YouTube channel charts.",
 "takeaways": [
  "In August 2024, US parents reported that children ages 5–8 averaged 3 hours 28 minutes a day of screen media, compared with 2 hours 8 minutes at ages 2–4 and 1 hour 3 minutes under age 2 (Common Sense Census 2025).",
  "At ages 5–8, the averages for listening to music (35 minutes a day; not a screen activity), games on a smartphone or tablet (34), longer videos on apps such as YouTube (32), and streamed shows and movies (31) were within a few minutes of each other; the report does not test whether these activities differ. Short videos on TikTok, Reels, or YouTube Shorts averaged 22 minutes, and 27% of children that age watched them every day.",
  "Reading or being read to from print books averaged 27 minutes a day at ages 5–8. Separately, the share of 5- to 8-year-olds who read or are read to daily was 52% in 2024, compared with 63% in 2020 and 64% in 2017.",
  "In Nielsen's ranking of streaming viewed on US TV sets, Bluey was the most-streamed title of 2025, at 45.2 billion minutes. From January to June 2026, it was the top title among viewers ages 2–11, followed by PAW Patrol and SpongeBob SquarePants.",
  "US toy dollar sales grew 6% in 2025, and Pokémon was the top toy property at $2.5 billion (Circana). Among the 2025 US children's print bestsellers were Dog Man #14, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, and two Ms. Rachel board books (Circana BookScan via Publishers Weekly).",
  "Each source measures something different: minutes reported by parents, viewing on TV sets, global Netflix views, or units and dollars sold. The numbers sit side by side in this story but can't be added up or ranked against each other."
 ],
 "items": [
  {
   "label": "Listening to music",
   "value": 35,
   "range_low": null,
   "range_high": null
  },
  {
   "label": "Smartphone or tablet games",
   "value": 34,
   "range_low": null,
   "range_high": null
  },
  {
   "label": "Longer videos on apps such as YouTube",
   "value": 32,
   "range_low": null,
   "range_high": null
  },
  {
   "label": "Streamed shows and movies (Netflix, Prime, Hulu, Disney+)",
   "value": 31,
   "range_low": null,
   "range_high": null
  },
  {
   "label": "Reading or being read to (print)",
   "value": 27,
   "range_low": null,
   "range_high": null
  },
  {
   "label": "Short videos (TikTok, Reels, YouTube Shorts)",
   "value": 22,
   "range_low": null,
   "range_high": null
  },
  {
   "label": "Console games",
   "value": 16,
   "range_low": null,
   "range_high": null
  },
  {
   "label": "DVDs",
   "value": 13,
   "range_low": null,
   "range_high": null
  },
  {
   "label": "Handheld games",
   "value": 8,
   "range_low": null,
   "range_high": null
  },
  {
   "label": "Reading or being read to (e-books)",
   "value": 7,
   "range_low": null,
   "range_high": null
  },
  {
   "label": "Live TV",
   "value": 6,
   "range_low": null,
   "range_high": null
  },
  {
   "label": "Computer games",
   "value": 6,
   "range_low": null,
   "range_high": null
  },
  {
   "label": "Social networking sites",
   "value": 6,
   "range_low": null,
   "range_high": null
  },
  {
   "label": "Looking things up",
   "value": 6,
   "range_low": null,
   "range_high": null
  },
  {
   "label": "Video-chatting",
   "value": 5,
   "range_low": null,
   "range_high": null
  },
  {
   "label": "Audiobooks",
   "value": 4,
   "range_low": null,
   "range_high": null
  },
  {
   "label": "Homework on a device",
   "value": 4,
   "range_low": null,
   "range_high": null
  }
 ],
 "csv": "https://raisingstoics.com/research/data/kids-shows-games-books-toys.csv",
 "chart_embed": "https://raisingstoics.com/research/embed/kids-shows-games-books-toys",
 "image": "https://raisingstoics.com/research/og/kids-shows-games-books-toys.png",
 "credit": "Raising Stoics (raisingstoics.com)"
}