Parents Spend more time on devices than their Kids

Swipe as I do, not as I say.

That could be the mantra of parents who teach their children how much time to spend on their iPhones, Androids, tablets, computers and watching television. Parents with tweens and teens (children aged eight to 18 years of age) spend over 9 hours with screen media each day, according to “The Common Sense Census: Plugged-In Parents of Tweens and Teens,” a survey of 1,700 such parents by Common Sense Media, a San Francisco-based organization that examines the impact of technology and media on families. That compares to the more than 4.5 hours of screen media tweens spend on screen media on average every day and 6.5 hours spent by teenagers every day, a similar survey last year of more than 2,650 children by the same organization.

“We hope that taking an honest look at how parents use media and tech, how they manage and monitor their kids, and how they talk to kids about media will help us all raise media-savvy kids and good digital citizens,” said Michael Robb, director of research at Common Sense Media and author of the latest study. (And all of that swiping is expensive: The profit share of Apple AAPL, +0.77% hit a record 91% in the third quarter of 2016, compared with 62.2% in the second quarter, according to Boston-based research firm Strategy Analytics, helped by the recall of Samsung’s005930, +1.37% explosion-prone Note 7. Prices for the iPhone 7 start at $769.)

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