Last term students in Ms Wilson’s grade six class began asking some interesting questions after having listened to some startling statistics on how much time children spent in front of electronic screens. I believe it hinted at being quite excessive. This created much discussion in their class, which then led to the need to begin an investigation. They needed volunteers so we helped out.

Two year six students, Billie and Finlay, needed answers to find out if indeed what they heard was true. As part of their Mathematics investigations they designed some questions to ask a sample of our year three students. From these answers Billie and Finlay collated the responses and analysed their findings. This survey took a week.

You can read their full research and analysis here.

Year 6 survey results

In summary they found the boys were over the recommended screen time and the girls were under. They acknowledge the group was small, but were surprised at the amount of time the boys put into playing computer games. Billie and Finlay also came up with some alternate activities.

Interestingly enough as I was thinking about collating this post I came across a Behind the News survey on the ABC written by BTN reporter Amelia Moseley which pretty much repeated Ms Wilson’s students research, although their sample size was a lot larger 18,000 young Australians.

They found 3 in 5 children spend more time in front of a screen than recommended by national guidelines.  National guidelines recommend two to five year olds no more than one hour of screen time, five to eighteen year olds no more than two hours a day.

The study did find the same trend in that boys were clocking up more time on technology 4.2hrs compared to  girls 3.7.hrs. They also noted that technology usage increased with age.

 

One in four people surveyed would find it impossible to go without technology for a week, while 15% couldn’t go without for  day.

Playing games, watching movies and watching TV or online videos topped the list. Others said they were doing homework, but nearly the same amount was using their time for social media.

Somethings to think about.

Do you agree with the results?

What is your favourite device to use?

How much time do you spend using your device? What are you doing on your device?