Comment by Brybry
1 year ago
According to historical Nielsen data[1] from 1991 to 2009: most Americans.
Even back to 1950, for per household data, it was above 4 hours.
[1] https://www.nielsen.com/insights/2009/average-tv-viewing-for...
1 year ago
According to historical Nielsen data[1] from 1991 to 2009: most Americans.
Even back to 1950, for per household data, it was above 4 hours.
[1] https://www.nielsen.com/insights/2009/average-tv-viewing-for...
2022 data from the BLS: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/atus.t11A.htm
Men spent 3 hours a day watching TV, and women 2.5 hours. But TV time is lower (around 2 hrs/day) from ages 20-44, then increases again after 45 and peaks at 75 years old at nearly 5 hours a day.
Households without kids watch more TV, which surprised me.
That's a nice find. I think BLS leisure time data is from the American Time Use Survey [1] which I think is asking something similar to this questionnaire [2] on page 22.
I'm not sure that's saying household time. For example, when they survey a household it wasn't clear to me if they survey everyone in the household or just one person. If it's one person then it sounds like they collect how that one person (age 15+) spent their own time and if there were kids in their household.
So then it'd be accurate to say that individuals in households without kids watch more TV as a singular activity (the survey doesn't allow simultaneous activities).
In comparison Nielsen used TV viewing diaries and automated data collection meters. You could have the TV on in the background while doing chores and it would still count.
It's interesting that the 2009 ATUS survey [3] had a 2.82 hour/person average because that's fairly different from the Nielsen data (4 hours 49 minutes/person).
I wonder if this difference is people underreporting in ATUS or Nielsen overreporting or a factor of differences in limitations in ATUS (no simultaneous activities allowed, 15+ age limitation) or Nielsen.
[1] https://www.bls.gov/opub/hom/atus/data.htm
[2] https://www.bls.gov/tus/questionnaires/tuquestionnaire.pdf
[3] https://www.bls.gov/news.release/archives/atus_06222010.pdf
Thats per household, not per person. That's different. And households also tended to get smaller.
The 1991 data and on was 4+ hours per person (older than 2). 7-8 hours per household.
They didn't have per person for the 1950 to 1990 data, only household (pdf in the link).