JUST PLAY? A FRAMEWORK FOR ANALYZING CHILDREN’S TIME USE

Abstract

The average American child spends more time “playing”¹ than doing any other activity besides sleeping and attending school (watching television comes in next, with children gradually replacing play time with TV time as they grow older) (Hofferth & Sandberg, 2001a, b). In fact, free, unstructured time makes up between 20 and 50% of children’s waking hours² (Hofferth & Sandberg, 2001a, b; Larson & Richards, 1989). Nonetheless, sociologists currently know very little about how children’s free time use influences their well-being. Although scholars, teachers, and parents all have strong opinions about the types of free-time activities that they think are “best” for children, recent studies of the association between children’s time use and their well-being have failed to find consistent associations (Hofferth & Sandberg, 2001a, b; McHale, Crouter & Tucker, 2001).

Citation

Chin, T. and Phillips, M. (2003), "JUST PLAY? A FRAMEWORK FOR ANALYZING CHILDREN’S TIME USE", Sociological Studies of Children and Youth (Sociological Studies of Children and Youth, Vol. 9), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 149-178. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1537-4661(03)09009-3