- Author: Fox News Latino
Common Sense Media released an exhaustive survey Tuesday outlining how young people spend screen time. One concern: the number of youngsters who feel comfortable multitasking while doing homework.
Two thirds of teenagers said they listen to music every day, and 58 percent said the same about watching television, the study said. By contrast, 45 percent reported using social media every day and only 36 percent said they enjoyed that activity "a lot"; Twice as many said they really enjoyed their music.
Television is the favorite activity of preteens, with 62 percent of respondents aged 8 to 12 saying they watched every day, the study said. Tweens said they spend just under six hours a day of media time. Exactly half of the time teenagers spend with video involves watching a TV program at the time it originally airs. The rest is parceled out among time delayed viewing, DVDs or online video, the study said.
Boys are much more likely to play video games than girls. The survey found male teenagers spent an average of 56 minutes a day gaming, while girls devoted only seven minutes. Girls spent more time on social media or reading than boys. Half of the teenagers said they watch TV or use social media either "a lot" or "sometimes" while doing homework, and 76 percent said they listen to music while working. Half of the teens say that listening to music actually helps their work, while only 6 percent said they thought it hurt.
"As a parent and educator, there's clearly more work to be done around the issue of multitasking," said James Steyer, founder and CEO of Common Sense Media, an organization that monitors youthful media use and gives recommendations to parents. "Nearly two thirds of teens today tell us they don't think watching TV or texting while doing homework makes any difference to their ability to study and learn, even though there's more and more research to the contrary.
"More kids said their parents have talked to them about the content of what they watch or listen to rather than the time spent on media, the study said. Poor children have less access to computers, tablets and smartphones than wealthier kids, but spend more time on devices when they have one, the study said. Common Sense Media conducted a survey of 2,658 young people between Feb. 6 and March 9. The results have a margin of error of plus or minus nearly 2 percent.
Source: Published originally on Fox News Latino as Study: Teens spend nearly 9 hours a day absorbing media, and Latinos even more, November 4, 2015.
- Author: Myriam Grajales-Hall
The U.S. Hispanic population is the largest minority segment and is growing at a dramatic rate towards ethnic plurality, which has already occurred in the most populous states and is beginning to occur among the U.S. baby population.
The future U.S. economy will depend on Hispanics by virtue of demographic change and the social and cultural shifts expected to accompany their continued growth, according to a new Nielsen report, State of the Hispanic Consumer: The Hispanic Market Imperative, which explores multiple aspects of this population.
“It has become increasingly important to challenge commonly held misconceptions about the Latino market that undermine the importance of its size, uniqueness, and value,” reads the report. The topics of this report draw on compelling evidence of market change and the perspective of marketers who have proven success in the Latino marketplace:
- Latinos are a fundamental component to business success, and not a passing niche on the sidelines.
- Rapid Latino population growth will persist, even if immigration is completely halted.
- Latinos have amassed significant buying power, despite perceptions to the contrary.
- Hispanics are the largest immigrant group to exhibit significant culture sustainability and are not disappearing into the American melting pot.
- Technology and media use do not mirror the general market but have distinct patterns due to language, culture, and ownership dynamics.
- Latinos exhibit distinct product consumption patterns and are not buying in ways that are the same as the total market.
Between 2000 and 2011, Hispanics accounted for 50 percent of U.S. population growth—14.7 million vs. 14.5 million among non-Hispanics. But between 2011 and 2016, Hispanics will comprise 60% of growth—7.4 million vs. 5.0 million, says Nielsen.
Rapid Latino population growth will persist, even if immigration is completely halted, says Nielsen. It cited long-range U.S. Census Bureau forecasts for Hispanic growth of 167 percent between 2010 and 2050 vs. 42 percent for the U.S. population overall.
The Latino population is young compared with a graying U.S. population—60 percent of the group is under age 35, and 75 percent is under age 45. The current median Latino age is 28 vs. 37 in the general population.
The Lempert Report mentions some of the distinctive ways Hispanics consume products and use media and technology:
- Hispanics make fewer shopping trips per household than non-Hispanics and spend more per trip.
- Hispanics spend 68 percent more time watching video on the Internet and 20 percent more time watching video on mobile phones than non-Hispanic whites.
- Hispanics are 28 percent likelier to own a smartphone than non-Hispanic whites. But they are less likely to access the Internet at home—62 percent vs. a 76 percent U.S. average.
Source: Nielsen, State of the Hispanic Consumer: The Hispanic Market Imperative, and Latino insights key to a vast growing market by The Lempert Report / Consumer Insight, Inc., Feb-April 2012.
- Posted By: Myriam Grajales-Hall
- Written by: Richard Barth, HispanicMarketInfo.com
There is power in words. During Martin Luther King Jr. Day his “I had a dream” speech could be seen in text or video and either way was touching and very much relevant today.
Hispanic identity, acculturation and assimilation has a language component. As reported in HispanicMarketInfo, a July 2011 study by Horowitz Associates reveals that for many U.S. Latinos, biculturalism is key to self-identity.Eighteen percent of Hispanics identify themselves as “completely American,” 43 percent as completely Latino, and almost four in ten (39 percent) feel they are a mix of both.
Latinos in bilingual homes are more likely to be bicultural. Four in ten Hispanics in English-oriented homes (where mostly/only English is spoken) consider themselves both Latino and American, and a full 16 percent of those heads of household define themselves as “completely Latino.”
At the same time, bicultural Latinos do not necessarily only live in bilingual homes: Almost one-quarter of bicultural Latino heads of household live in Spanish-dominant homes; one-third live in English-oriented homes.
The study also found that Latinos identifying themselves as bicultural spend the majority of their TV viewing time– 72 percent — with English language TV and 28 percent with Spanish language programming.
Source: HispanicMarketInfo.com, Cultural identity and language, January 17, 2012.
- Author: Myriam Grajales-Hall
According to a new report from education organizations Joan Ganz Cooney Center and the Sesame Workshop, Latinos kids have more media exposure than any other group. They also had the biggest growth in media consumption between 2004 and 2009. In fact, they’re clocking the kind of hours that raise eyebrows among child development experts.
The report looks at seven recent studies that indicate young children are increasingly consuming media from all types of sources, from MP3 players and video games, to the Internet, TV, cell phones and even books. The most striking numbers are the ones rung up by digital media: About 25 percent of three-year-olds go online at least once a day. By age five, that figure is 50 percent.
Overall, despite some barriers to access, lower-income, Hispanic and African American children consume far more media than their middle-class and white counterparts.
According to numbers cited in the study, Hispanics ages 8 to 18 received an average of 13 hours of total media exposure each day in 2009, a sharp uptick from the almost-nine hours they were getting in 2004. White children, meanwhile, were exposed to just under eight hours per day on average in 2004, compared to 8 hours and 36 minutes per day in 2009.Television is the most popular medium with Latinos and kids overall. According to the most recent Kaiser numbers, kids 8 to 18 watch about 4.5 hours of television a day. The study cites the numbers from Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation saying Black and Latino kids watch about two hours more TV per day than white children. The American Academy of Pediatrics, meanwhile, recommends kids this age watch no more than two hours a day.
And while Black and Hispanic children have less home internet access than white children, Hispanics are spending 40 minutes more per day on the web. Once they reach their tween years, Latinos are spending more than 100 minutes each day playing video games, as opposed to the hour spent by white children.
The researchers point out that children need to be prepared for a digital future, and that the quality of the media consumed is key.
Other studies indicate that excessive screen time has been linked to a variety of problems in kids, including childhood obesity, delays in social development and poor grades.
Source: The Joan Ganz Cooney Center and the Sesame Workshop, “Always Connected": Young Children's Media Use on the Rise,” March 17, 2011.