Time for Family

This chapter investigates the context of children's daily life linked to family, in particular concentrating on the time children spend at home and with parents. Mirroring the stability of time at school over the past several decades, children's waking time at home with their parents on school days changed remarkably little over four decades between 1975 and 2015. Days when children are not at school, in contrast, have witnessed significant changes in the time children are at home with their parents. In 2000, children spent less time at home with parents than children in 1975. The examination of changes in children's activities in context revealed that children in 2000 were spending more time in screen-based activities and substantially more time in domestic activities (primarily shopping) outside the home than children in 1975, the latter of which likely includes time when children are with their parents. Between 2000 and 2015, there was a subsequent reversal of this trend, with a significant increase in the time children spent at home with their parents, which accounts for an overall increase in this period in the time children spend at the same location as their parents. This increase in time at home with parents on non-school days coincides with children spending more time doing activities such as homework, study, and screen-based activities, and less time in active travel and out-of-home play.

Conclusion

This concluding chapter surveys the key findings and issues raised in the previous chapters. This study of a child's day provides the most extensive picture currently available in the UK, and elsewhere in the world, into how children's time use has changed over the past several decades. It identifies areas of expected change as well as other areas of surprising stability. It reveals how change and stability in children's time use blend together to comprise a child's day, uncovering also the multi-layered contexts of a child's day. Aspects of children's time use, and how this may have changed, will no doubt continue to surface in public debate in connection with their well-being. While welcoming this, it is necessary to always question and seek to understand how supposed changes actually fit within a child's day, the types of days where these changes are concentrated, among whom, and to seek out evidence on how such changes relate to other activities and the social contexts of daily life.

Time for Health

This chapter examines associations between children's time use and a range of different health outcomes. Concerns about the prevalence of obesity and being overweight among children, and associated health problems, have drawn attention to questions around whether children are spending too much time in sedentary screen-based activities on the one hand and not enough time in active physical activities on the other. Technological change has greatly enhanced the capacity for children to spend time in a wide variety of screen-based activities, and persistent concerns about children's safety outdoors have led to increasing restrictions on the time children spend outside. These factors have likely coalesced over recent decades, resulting in children leading lives that are less active and spent indoors focused on screens. The widespread view is that this is indeed the case. Considering the evidence for this, the chapter analyses long-term trends in screen time (comprised of time watching TV, using computers, and playing video games) alongside trends in physical activities such as sport and exercise, play outside the home, and active travel (walking and cycling).

Time for Education and Culture

This chapter discusses overall trends in children's time doing homework and study. It analyses differences in trends associated with parental education to explore the extent to which trends in time doing homework and study reflect socio-economic differences in educational outcomes. Despite increasing levels of school attainment, children from lower socio-economic backgrounds overall persistently obtain fewer qualifications from school than those from relatively more advantaged families. The chapter also studies trends in children's time reading and their participation in a wide range of cultural activities, such as going to galleries and museums or the cinema and sporting events. Middle-class parents typically possess relatively high levels of cultural capital, evidenced in their relatively higher qualification and participation in different cultural practices, which may in turn help sustain socio-economic differences in educational outcomes for children.

How Children Feel About How They Spend Time

This chapter focuses on the affective component of subjective well-being, specifically in connection with how children feel about how they spend their time. The results for children's enjoyment of time in different activities are perhaps unsurprising, showing that they generally do not enjoy time at school and time doing homework, and they enjoy very much time in screen-based activities and other leisure. Central to the basic understanding of what constitutes a good childhood is that children have the time and space to have fun and enjoy themselves. Based on these results it might well be suggested that in order to maximise child well-being they should be encouraged to spend more time in leisure activities including screen time, and to avoid or minimise time in school and doing homework. One can easily imagine children cheering this proposition on, but prior research demonstrates that there is a degree of mismatch between feelings about time use during activities and indicators of general well-being. Although children tend to find time in education-related activities unenjoyable, and they express comparatively low levels of happiness with this area of their lives, some have found these to be positively associated with overall happiness. The chapter then examines the rarely studied experience of time pressure among children.

Introduction

This introductory chapter traces some of the major strands of social change thought to have had an impact on different areas of children's daily time use. The past several decades have witnessed rapid social, economic, and technological change, widely thought to have affected many aspects of children's daily lives. Technological change potentially has had the most direct impact on children's lives, and certainly has garnered the most attention, through changes affecting screen-based activities. Education is a further major domain in children's lives where there has been persistent change over many decades. The chapter then examines the relationship between children's time use and outcomes relating to their health, development, and well-being, drawing together strands of thought from the sociology of childhood and research on child well-being. It sets out the data, measures, and methods of the empirical analysis, followed by a first outline of change in a child's day over four decades between 1975 and 2015.

Time for Technology

This chapter evaluates children's time using technology. Technological change has dramatically altered not only the overall amount of time children spend in screen-based activities, but also the composition of this time. The time children spend watching TV decreased substantially and they are spending more time using computers and playing video games. In addition, children are now spending a substantial amount of time using devices such as smartphones and tablets. Children can use these devices at various locations and during times also spent doing various screen-based and non-screen activities. Children's time using devices appears to have had little impact on the time they spend in other activities, including physical activities. There has been, however, dramatic change in elements of the social context of children's daily lives that may be connected to the time they spend using mobile devices.