No time flat

Kids spend 12 minutes a day reading periodicals

Kids spend almost as much time each day engaging with media as adults spend working full time. But young people spend very little of that time reading.

No time flat — **Sign of the times** Americans aged 8 to 18 spend nearly eight hours a day with media. They spend less than 3% of that time reading.

That’s according to a Kaiser Family Foundation study, which followed 2,000 people aged 8 to 18.

Reading down …

Kids spend more time than they did five or 10 years ago engaging with of all kinds of media … except the written word. Kids read:

Magazines for 9 minutes a day (down from 14 five years ago)
Newspapers for 3 minutes a day (down from 6)
Books for 25 minutes a day (up from 21 a decade ago)

Kids spend an average of 2 minutes a day reading magazines and newspapers online, the study says.

How much of that time are they spending on your messages? (Find out how much time it takes people to read your piece.)

… All other media usage up

Americans aged 8 to 18 spend 7.5 hours a day, seven days a week, on a computer, watching television, using their cell phones, playing video games or listening to music. That’s more time than they spend with any other activity besides sleeping.

That number jumps to 10 hours and 45 minutes a day when you take into account information multitasking, where people engage with multiple devices at once.

Those numbers are a big jump from five years ago. Then, young people averaged 6 hours and 21 minutes a day engaging with media. And they packed more than 8-and-a-half hours worth of media content into that time by multitasking.

All of which means that kids spend less than 3% of their media time reading.

Daily newspaper reading down

The proportion of young people who read newspapers every day also dropped, according to the study. Kids who read newspapers dropped from 42% in 1999 to 23% in 2009.

Leisure reading down

Some 45% of 17-year-olds say they read for fun only a few times a year at most, according to a report from Common Sense Media. That’s up from 19% in 1984, when no one had smartphones.

How can you reach all of your readers?
Read it and weep. More than half of all Americans have basic or below-basic reading skills, according to the DOE’s latest adult literacy test.
How well are you doing reaching these folks with your messages?
To reach all of your readers — regardless of their reading level — please join me at Rev Up Readability, — our tight-writing workshop that begins on Feb. 22.
You’ll learn to make every piece you write easier to read and understand. You’ll walk away with secrets you can use to reach more readers, measurably improve readability and sell concise writing to management. And you’ll learn to write messages that get more people to read your piece, read more of it, read it faster, understand it better and remember it longer.
Save up to $100 with our group discounts.