Yes, it is yet another survey, but probably a startling and scary one, especially if you are a parent. According to survey released by ASSOCHAM, kids spent about 35 hrs a week watching TV or about 5 hours a day on average.
That’s about 150 hours a month or about 1800 hours a year..that’s humongous !
And believe me, they do not watch discovery and National Geographic Channels, most of them them are hooked on to TV during Prime Time. I am sure you very well know what gets aired on TV during prime time!
Getting back to Assocham Report on Television viewing habits, here are some of the startling findings:
- 90 percent of parents agree that TV programs are getting worse every year because of derogative language and adult themes in shows that air from 7 to 10 p.m.
- 76 percent kids enjoy reality shows and 54 percent agreed that they watch something else when parents are around .
- 71 percent parents are very concerned about vulgarity of shows beamed, while 54 percent are worried about violence depicted on shows.
- 63 percent favor new regulations to limit the amount of sex and violence in TV.
- Two-thirds of infants and toddlers watch a screen an average of 2 hours a day, kids under age 6 watch an average of about 3-4 hours of screen media a day.
- Kids and teens 8 to 18 years spend nearly 4-6 hours a day in front of a TV screen
- 76% parents say that some shows encourage kids (ages 4-8) to disrespect parents
- Television alone is responsible for 10% of youth violence.
- 86% of parents also feel that the government should step in to regulate sexually explicit television and magazine images aimed at children
I knew that Television was watched widely amongst kids, but if the above findings are anything to go by, this is causing serious damage to generations to come. Imagine a 12 or 13 year old watching Bigg Boss.
Now, there has been a raging debate to one of our earlier posts on reality TV show Bigg Boss, whether it should be banned or not. Now, seeing the numbers above, I shudder to think the kind of influence these show may be having on them!
Note: Above findings are based of interviews with more than 2,000 teenagers and 3,000 parents
Thats a good stats and I am happy that some one in India is actually working on getting these numbers!!! instead of always looking at numbers from some foreign (read US!) agency doing the numbers and predicting everything and anything, when the guys crunching the numbers have no clue of the Indian Demographics!!
Anyway, I have always wondered why can’t they label all reality shows as Adults Only!! For all practical purposes They Are! They don’t add any positive value to the society. When I moved to India after being in the US for 5 yrs I was alarmed to see that how Indian metros, metro media, and Bollywood have become more of a voice or more to say “Plain Dumb Copy” of the Western media and culture!! There are sooo many things good abt western and soo many things that suck and w.r.t to media I am afraid we have only been able to copy the “deep S**T” from Western, especially the US, media!!
+1 for Labelling All Reality shows as Adults Only!!!