Soc Indic Res (2009) 93:127129

DOI 10.1007/s11205-008-9414-5

Media Use vs. Work and Play in Middle Childhood

Sandra L. Hofferth

Accepted: 1 August 2008 / Published online: 17 December 2008

Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2008

As new media continue to be introduced, they become especially troubling for educators,
who fear that children will grow up as zombies, lacking creativity, inspiration, and literacyand becoming sedentary and overweight (Cordes and Miller 2000; Goodenough
2008; Healy 1998). Many worried previously that television would have similar negative
impacts, but research has shown that children learn from media just as they have from the
natural world around them, so that the message is more important than the medium (Fisch
2004). This brief article analyzes how media use is nested in childrens everyday lives. In
particular, it focuses on the hypothesis of media displacement of other activities.
According to the displacement hypothesis, media displace creative activities (such as
free play), achievement-related activities (like reading and studying), and physical activities (like sports or hiking) (Neuman 1995). In this article, play refers to unstructured
noncomputer leisure-time activities not directly related to school, including indoor and
outdoor play. Achievement-related activities (such as studying and reading) are the
work of children in middle childhood. Physical activities include time in structured
sports and in walking/hiking outdoors. Time spent in a new activity has to come from
another previous activity, leading to the expectation that many other activities will decline.
However, it is expected that time will come from either functionally equivalent activities
(such as other types of play), or from activities to which considerable time is now spent and
that would, therefore, be only minimally affected by a small reduction in other time, such
as sleep. Finally, new media may simply displace older media use.
What, then, are the implications of childrens increased exposure to new media for their
everyday lives, especially valuable activities they should be doing, such as playing, reading
and studying?

S. L. Hofferth (&)
Department of Family Science, University of Maryland, 1210 E Marie Mount Hall, College Park, USA
e-mail: hofferth@umd.edu

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S. L. Hofferth

1 Data
Data come from the 1997 and 2003 waves of the PSID Child Development Supplement, a
nationally representative sample of 1,448 U.S. children aged 612 in 1997 and 1,317 U.S.
children 612 in 2003, a pooled cross section. In both studies, 24-h time diaries were
obtained, both for a weekend day and a weekday, as reported either by the child directly or
jointly by parent and child. A weighted weekly time estimate was obtained by multiplying
weekday time by five and weekend time by two.
Coding was based upon the classification used in Timmer et al. (1985) and in Hofferth
and Sandberg (2001a, b). Activity categories used in this analysis include the amount of
time spent watching television, using the computer, playing video games, playing without
the computer or video game device, studying without the computer, reading, playing
sports, engaging in other outdoor activities, and sleeping (Hofferth 2008b). Time spent in
school is used as a control variable in the displacement analyses.
Control variables include race/ethnicity, ratio of income to poverty, gender, age of the
child, maternal education and employment, family size, whether they live in a warm state,
season of interview, and year of study. A weighted multivariate analysis of the pooled
sample was conducted using OLS or Tobit (when participation was less than 90%), with
standard errors corrected for sample selection and clustering.

2 Results
Over the period 19972003, video game play and television viewing increased, whereas
other play, sleep, sports, and outdoor activities declined (Hofferth 2008a, b). On the face of
it, this suggests a harmful media effect. However, in spite of increased media time, both
studying and reading increased. What are the implications of spending one more hour on
media for each type of activity, controlling for family and child factors that are likely to
influence both media use and other activities?
The results show that those children who spend one more hour per week playing video
games or watching television indeed spend 710 fewer minutes playing, sleeping, reading,
and studying. One additional video game hour is associated with spending as much as 25
fewer minutes in outdoor activities. Children who spend lots of time playing video games
and watching television and who do not go outside are the new couch potatoes.
Second, those who spend more time using the computer spend about 9 fewer minutes in
play, sleep, and sports activities. From the displacement hypothesis, it makes sense that
computer time would come out of noncomputer play, and that sleep would decline
somewhat as well because it represents a large block of available time. That time in sports
is also lower suggests that differences in preferences may also be at work. Certain types of
children are more interested in sports activities (jocks), while others (brains) are more
interested in computers and studying (Eccles and Barber 1998). In support of this interpretation, our results show that children spending more time on the computer do not spend
less time reading and studying and, significantly, they do not give up time out of doors.
Finally, we examined the current tradeoffs across different media. One hour more of
computer use is associated with 11 fewer minutes of video game play. This suggests that
playing on the computer and video games are functionally equivalent activities. Greater
video game play is associated with marginally significantly less television viewing; television viewing time provides a large block of time from which other activities can be
drawn. Greater computer time is also associated with less television viewing time but the

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coefficient is not statistically significant. Thus, there are tradeoffs across all media
examined here; the coefficients are all negative, though not always significant.

3 Conclusions
This analysis used time diaries collected from children aged 612 in both 1997 and 2003 to
examine the implications of increased media use for childrens lives, including play,
achievement, and other media use. The results support the concerns of those who fear that
media interfere with other activities. Of particular concern is that in both years, childrens
nonmedia play hours and their sleep hours are shorter with greater media use. Play and
sleep both seem to offer large blocks of childrens time from which new activities can be
carved out. Video game playing and television viewing are negatively associated with
reading, study and outdoor activities, again suggesting potential negative effects on
achievement and physical activity of extensive media use.
Of course, one cannot know whether the effects documented here are causal, for
example, whether if children cut back on television viewing they would read and study
more or spend more time outdoorsor whether they would simply play more video games.
However, the tradeoffs across media are consistently negative, suggesting that additional
media time would come from other media time. The increase in cable channels and movie
availability apparently has kept this displacement to a minimum, as television time continues to increase (though at a lower rate than between 1981 and 1997 (Hofferth 2008b;
Hofferth and Sandberg 2001b). The large amount of time spent watching television provides a large pool of available time from which to expand new media and may reflect a
medium that will decline in the future.

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