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Netflix Saves Kids from Up to 400 Hours of Commercials a Year

650 points by sharkweek 7y ago

burntoutcase 7y ago
While I'm glad that kids in Netflix-only households aren't getting bombarded with advertisements targeted at children the way kids my age were in the 1980s, I can't help but suspect that these ad-free kids need to be exposed to some advertising in an educational context so that they learn to recognize when somebody is trying to con them into buying shit they don't need and probably didn't want in the first place.
- newsoul2019 7y ago
  Indeed. Whenever a commercial is on, I like to ask the kids "What is this ad trying to sell you?"
- nordsieck 7y ago
  > I can't help but suspect that these ad-free kids need to be exposed to some advertising in an educational context so that they learn to recognize when somebody is trying to con them into buying shit they don't need and probably didn't want in the first place. Do you mean something like, the Internet? Advertising is so pervasive, you'd probably have to do something drastic like Amish style technology banning to avoid it; even that may not be enough. As a side note, even though Netflix doesn't have separate advertising, I'm sure there's at least product placement and other forms of advertising in their content.
  - gibspaulding 7y ago
    Ublock origin, Netflix, Spotify, and ditching mobile apps for social media will cut out a huge percentage of adds for most people. Admittedly I haven't found a way around billboards, adds playing on gas pumps (though I try to avoid those gas stations), playing in stores, or the occasional sponsored link on some sites I visit, but compared to old TV or radio these are fairly painless.
    - acheron 7y ago
      Press (probably) the second button on the right at the gas station pump, it will mute the ad. Still plays the video but much easier to ignore. For awhile this was apparently just a hidden feature, recently I saw one where the button was labeled.
- michaelt 7y ago
  Then you'll be pleased to learn adverts are also available online :)
- bluetidepro 7y ago
  > I can't help but suspect that these ad-free kids need to be exposed to some advertising in an educational context so that they learn to recognize when somebody is trying to con them into buying shit they don't need and probably didn't want in the first place. It's not like they spend 24/7 on Netflix, they are probably getting bombed with ads more so than ever in history out in the real world. And even more so, probably even more aggressively than the commercials they are missing by using Netflix.
- not_a_cop75 7y ago
  Honestly, if you haven't seen the advertising now rampant in the new Netflix interface, then you haven't been paying attention. Everyday I'm bombarded with "ads" on Netflix for shows that my family wants no part of. Things that seem either offense at worst, or at best misguided as "positive" offerings are frequently shown.
  - _bxg1 7y ago
    As obnoxious as this is, it's still only promoting other shows on the same service you're already paying for. It isn't convincing your kid that they need you to buy them a hundred other products, or - more importantly - seeding them with the idea of constant consumerism as a lifestyle. That said, I've made Hulu my default now specifically because of Netflix's pushy dark patterns.
    - burntoutcase 7y ago
      I've made secondhand optical media my fault because I'm sick of paying rent.
    - not_a_cop75 7y ago
      I humbly disagree. I would state that the product being sold is the lifestyle being marketed. I don't have enough in common with the Baizuo to want to watch them, copy them or imitate them.
      - _bxg1 7y ago
        I can barely even parse what you're trying to express here. It seems far-removed from the topic at hand.
        not_a_cop75 7y ago
        When you aren't being charged for something you are the product. And when you've being fed ads even when you're being charged, guess what? You're still the product. Pay for ads in product has come a long way since AOL.
- balls187 7y ago
  I grew up on a military base in a foreign country, and all the television was from the Armed Forces network. There were no commercials, just random PSA. Occasionally teachers would get VHS tapes with recorded TV from the US, and we were more enthralled with the commercials than the programs themselves.
- awinder 7y ago
  They learn / don't learn that skill from kidfluencers on YouTube. From what I've seen with my daughter that's a super-weaponized form of advertising compared to what I grew up in, anyone who survives Ryan and turns out halfway adjusted will have made it through a real crucible.
  - burntoutcase 7y ago
    > They learn / don't learn that skill from kidfluencers on YouTube. Thanks for giving me a new excuse for being a misanthrope.
    - awinder 7y ago
      LOL! It really is something to behold, this article is a pretty good rundown in what’s going on (I would think I was making this up as some fringe thing, if I had not watched it first hand) https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/01/business/media/social-media-influencers-kids.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/01/business/media/social-med...
  - r00fus 7y ago
    Yeah, my kids crave youtube, but I won't let them watch it.
- bzbarsky 7y ago
  For what it's worth, I distinctly remember that sometime in middle school we had a unit where exactly that happened: we were shown some ads, and there was various discussion about the way ads are created, the tricks they use, etc, etc. The "elmer's glue for milk in cereal ads" bit definitely stuck with me. ;)
kailuowang 7y ago
400 hrs of commercials a year? How much TV are these kids watching a day?
- gwtaylor 7y ago
  The article claims nearly 4.5 hours per day. I find that hard to believe... I don't know any children (in my admittedly biased sample) that watch more than an hour or two.
  - Pfhreak 7y ago
    I know families who literally leave a tv on for the kids 24/7. It's on during meals, it's on during the day, it's there as they are getting ready for bed. Just constantly on and droning away. I cannot understand that behavior. Even an hour or two a day seems like a lot for a kid to me.
    - balls187 7y ago
      Sometimes having an hour of time to yourself while your kids are watching TV is a huge boon.
  - eganist 7y ago
    3:30pm-7:00pm -- homework + tv (mostly tv) OR practice. 7:00pm-8:00pm -- dinner with the family (during tv, possibly) 8:00pm-11:00pm -- homework + tv (mostly tv) 11:00pm-1:00am -- tv --- Even including sports practice, we've cracked over five hours, and that's from when I was in grade school.
    - mrguyorama 7y ago
      It's interesting to me that you would stay up until 1 am as a grade schooler. That is quite late
      - eganist 7y ago
        I pulled all-nighters in grade school to maximize my media intake (in this case browsing message boards) while still getting homework done. Guessing kids these days do the same to stay on top of snap, insta, tiktok, reddit, etc.
throwaway66666 7y ago
Netflix puts the ads directly inside the shows they control themselves. This way no adblock can censor them, and Netflix can prance around pretending they are saints for not showing ads. Example "Hey let's call an uber" says character A. "I watched X on netflix yesterday" says character B.
- pavel_lishin 7y ago
  You choose the shows your kids watch; you don't get to choose what commercials a cable/airwave channel shows you.
  - throwaway66666 7y ago
    I am not saying cable is better. I am saying that netflix has a lot of hidden marketing in their shows (for adults, I don't have kids and I don' watch kids shows) that praising them for being ad-free is kinda disgenious. In the end of the day I 'd rather get a big blinking "this is an ad" banner on my ads, rather than the characters smirking on camera while drinking from a nescafe cup while waiting for an uber to arrive. Maybe those are not actual ads and the show writers just added uber and nescafe for narrative purposes, I don't know, because it doesn't tell us.
    - jimcsharp 7y ago
      >netflix has a lot of hidden marketing in their shows I really believe there's hidden cigarette marketing. Maybe directors are just taking artistic license that they can't on cable, but it just really feels like there's a noticeable increase of on-screen smoking in a lot of their originals.
      - filoleg 7y ago
        Maybe, but I honestly feel like it just coincides with the whole neo-noir and lazy-noir genre coming back, where smoking/drinking at very regular intervals throughout the day is a staple. Part of the reason I feel this way is the fact that I was never able to tell or even notice the brand of cigarettes the characters were smoking.
bargl 7y ago
Worth. Every. Penny. I went to my parents house with my son. He was 4. They turned on cartoons. Then he said, "Dad why'd you change the show? I don't want to watch this." It was a commercial. I had to explain commercials to my son. It was at that moment I realized how much of my tv watching as a kid was commercials.
- saluki 7y ago
  Same my son grew up on Netflix, we were watching the Super Bowl on OTA tv when he was 5 and he asked the same thing, what's this? Oh that's a commercial. He also picked up that when we search a toy on amazon, afterward there would be an ad on the side of YouTube for the same toy, he pointed and asked how they did that. This was around the same time, he was 5 or 6.
- lmkg 7y ago
  To be fair, my favorite show growing up was Transformers. So technically even the show itself was a commercial.
  - Insanity 7y ago
    That probably goes for a lot of shows for kids :)
    - smhenderson 7y ago
      I'd say if a kids show is not on public television it most likely is a commercial for a toy or a vehicle for a number of other ads for unrelated toys. And even for me and my five year old, there is plenty of Danial Tiger gear out there to buy! The difference is they make and sell the toys but they don't advertise them during the show. It's not much but that subtle difference is what allows me to sit down and watch 30 - 60 minutes of these shows a few times a week with her. As others have mentioned, even NetFlix "sells toys", just not overtly like network TV does. But just watching PJ Max, Trolls, etc. makes my five year old grand daughter want everything she sees when we go to any store that has these shows' stuff for sale. Both of them are still better than numbing their minds with 8-12 minutes of intense, flashy commercials for every 30 minute show they watch though.
duxup 7y ago
Even if just for my own sanity ... I like the lack of commercials and the resulting stable levels of volume. My kids don't watch a lot of TV / screen time but when they do I want to be able to monitor it, and yet also maintain my own sanity.
- moate 7y ago
  Oh my god this! Why is is so hard to balance the audio between commercials and shows?
  - duxup 7y ago
    It's not hard, they don't want to do it, they want loud commercials to get your attention.
davidy123 7y ago
This is a step in the right direction. Still, Netflix &c force a lot of content of their own choosing through suggestions and highlighted content, using ever invasive techniques, like auto play, to force that content on users. A service that only ever showed content that someone specifically requested would be an improvement.
- jeffrallen 7y ago
  To turn off auto-play, login on a computer, not Apple TV. Go to Accounts, Profile, Playback settings. For kids accounts it is different. Get into the help pages, and from there the kids profile's playback options ate available. Very confusing, only found it by chance while chatting with the support people.
DanFeldman 7y ago
Good riddance. The last time I watched TV with ads was for the superbowl, and even those nicely produced ads I found absolutely grating. There's no way I can go back to ads between tense moments in TV shows. It's like seeing the internet with an adblocker for the first time.
- mrec 7y ago
  Similar thing here - the only time I now encounter video-ads-making-noise is at the cinema before a film, and it's becoming unpleasant enough there that I've largely stopped going to the cinema. It's not (or not just) that they're getting worse, it's that once the familiarity wears off you can't help but see how psychologically damaging and hostile they are.
  - lone_haxx0r 7y ago
    > once the familiarity wears off you can't help but see how psychologically damaging and hostile they are. Same thing happens to me with TV news. I used to watch them, but now, everytime someone else is watching, I can't help but see how much they manipulate the content to their convenience, and how much they blatantly lie.
    - airstrike 7y ago
      > Same thing happens to me with TV news. I used to watch them, but now, everytime someone else is watching, I can't help but see how much they manipulate the content to their convenience, and how much they blatantly lie. This, one billion times. I don't care which network or show you watch, or which newspaper you read, they are all lying. They are all pushing an agenda very clearly. I mostly make do with Bloomberg, WSJ and NPR. I can't even read the NY Times these days.
    - peatmoss 7y ago
      PBS Newshour. Clarification: PBS Newshour is as much (national / international) news as you need in a day, and doesn’t sensationalize.
  - 7y ago
xfitm3 7y ago
I think advertisements and overstimulation is going to lead to serious mental health issues. It’s already presenting with people who lose their social media accounts or followers, and that’s arguably short term effects. We’ll need more time to see long term effects.
2ion 7y ago
Which then they spend watching 400 more hours entertainment with product placements. Infinite jest, this is.
blobbers 7y ago
The average 2-5 year old is spending over 1,600 hours a year watching television. This seems nuts to me. That is 4.5 hours a day! For a 2 year old? Who are these parents...
- moate 7y ago
  Average parents?
  - apetresc 7y ago
    That just can't be the average. That must be the very top of the curve. For it to be the average, with the very bi-modal distribution coming from parents who have no-screens policies, the average in that other cluster would have to be like 8 hours a day. I just don't believe that's possible with any frequency.
    - silversconfused 7y ago
      Top of the curve is closer to 16-20 hours a day. As in, if they didn't fall asleep, it'd literally be 24 hours. Lots of parents let their kids eat and sleep in front of the tv, and that's nothing new to this generation.
    - sampleinajar 7y ago
      What's the methodology? If the tv is on is that counted regardless of whether kids are actively watching or not? I could see a tv on all day skewing numbers easily.
    - moate 7y ago
      I mean "mean" parents, not median parents. Sure, there's no-screen policy parents, but those feel (citation needed!) like a less common occurrence than "some" or "unrestricted" screen parents. If no-screen parents only represent 10% of the total population, they're not going to do as much pulling the number down as you might think. There's no way there's an equal distribution on this stuff among between "none" and "some" so they won't weight as heavily towards lowering the curve. Also, it's a pretty wide age range. What people allow a 2 year old vs a 5 year old to do/consume is a world apart. There's all sorts of things that go into it. I agree, without deep diving into methodology, these numbers are a whole lot of "but what does this actually MEAN"?
blobbers 7y ago
"The average 2-5 year old is spending over 1,600 hours a year watching television." This seems nuts to me. That is 4.5 hours a day! For a 2 year old? Who are these parents...
- aczerepinski 7y ago
  Childcare is super expensive. I think there are a ton of people who can’t afford it and use screen time to supplement. It keeps the kid safe in one spot while you can get stuff done. Keep in mind that letting a child play outside by themselves is essentially illegal.
  - jak92 7y ago
    > child play outside by themselves is essentially illegal. No it's not.
    - aczerepinski 7y ago
      I encourage you to google it. People get arrested all around the country for letting their kids play in the park across the street, ride their bike around the block, sit in the car alone at the bank, etc.
      - WhompingWindows 7y ago
        What are the rates of arrest? I've seen a couple reports, but n=2 is not a data set.
      - mehrdadn 7y ago
        Probably depends on the area and other factors... in my area it was totally normal for kids to walk some half a mile to a mile home in middle school just over a decade ago and I don't think it's changed. I think even elementary school was normal with possibly a smaller distance (not sure how far kids went, but a couple blocks was fine).
        7y ago
makk 7y ago
Or, turning off the screens saves kids from 100% of commercials a year. Something about articles like this make me want to vomit.
- blobbers 7y ago
  Great root cause analysis. Wish more people would think like this.
- kikoreis 7y ago
  You beat me to it. A lot of the comments here underscore how much better it is (which I don't doubt) without seeming to acknowledge that ads are very likely to come -- in fact, didn't they test already last year? Yeah, https://thenextweb.com/contributors/2018/10/20/netflix-tests-ads/ https://thenextweb.com/contributors/2018/10/20/netflix-tests...
Balvarez 7y ago
Give them time, They'll add commercials. At one time cable didn't have commercials.
kyranjamie 7y ago
A hugely positive statistic. Next, calculate the savings to parents, in advertised toys that haven't been bought.
luckydata 7y ago
It's true but I don't like how I can't filter content for my son. He's 4yo and is a little prone to act in real life like the characters in the cartoons do and I would like to at least temporarily filter things that have fighting in it (like power rangers) because he tends to fight his classmates (they like it, the teachers give us endless grief about it). No way to do that and it seems like a pretty basic form of control that should be table stakes for a kids oriented service.
- dqpb 7y ago
  Keep him away from YouTube then. They have an outbreak of "kids shows" designed to corrupt and traumatize the minds of children.
  - detaro 7y ago
    At least you can fill a hard disk with content downloaded from YouTube quite easily, and restrict selection that way.
    - jerf 7y ago
      YouTube with the "parent firewall" is an awesome resource. "Hey, Dad, what other kinds of carnivorous plants are there?" "Give me a sec here... no... no... no... ah, National Geographic, that'll work." "Hey Dad, what does the Earth look like from the space station?" "Hey Dad, what's a lemur?" Amazing tool. YouTube with kids wandering around on their own is scary.
- nhumrich 7y ago
  Yes! This all day long. I want either a whitelist or blacklist for shows on netflix children accounts. Amazon prime kidtime lets you do this for their tablets (even though the feature is very hidden), and its awesome.
  - ceejayoz 7y ago
    Netflix permits blacklisting on kids' accounts. I've very happily used it to suppress the especially inane stuff. (Account > Parental controls > Restrict specific titles)
SpaceInvader 7y ago
Year and a half ago[0] it was 230 hours. Are there more commercials in tv nowadays? [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15990559 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15990559
- jerf 7y ago
  My wife and I buy a couple of relatively popular TV series on Amazon to watch them without commercials. I've been watching the minute count on a "half-hour" TV series creep down over the years... 23 minutes... 22 minutes... current "best" record I've personally witnessed is 18 minutes, but stay tuned. If someone replied with a 16 or a 17 example I wouldn't be shocked. I'm wondering if the TV companies will experience some modicum of shame around the 15 minute mark.
  - SpaceInvader 7y ago
    Huh, I'm glad I don't watch tv at all. Such a waste of time and brainwash too.
jstewartmobile 7y ago
It's nice to see that they've discovered a profitable way to make people retarded without resorting to ads.
jonstewart 7y ago
It’s terrifying that kids watch so much TV that they could save hundreds of hours a year by not watching commercials.
throwaway55554 7y ago
That's over an hour of commercials per day? WTF? That's a LOT of screen time.
wil421 7y ago
They’ll save you from commercials but they’re not afraid of producing shows that are lower quality than some of the “good” commercials.
meddlepal 7y ago
Sub-headline: Kids waste those 400 hours playing Fortnite.
- kxter 7y ago
  or Kingdom Hearts, or Mortal Combat... ;)
onemoresoop 7y ago
Commercials are for the mind what spam e-mail is for your inbox, you can delete them but they'll annoy the hell of you. Of course it's not a good analogy as commercials are paying for the content but the problem is the quantity and quality. In the US I normally turn off volume when there is a commercial or avoid commercial content at all costs. However, when I visit my friends in Europe I find that their (TV) commercial a lot more enjoyable. Anybody else experienced this as well?
nickreese 7y ago
What a terribly thin affiliate site? How'd this get front-paged? Why aren't we linking to the study instead of the summary of the study? http://www.med.umich.edu/yourchild/topics/tv http://www.med.umich.edu/yourchild/topics/tv
- dang 7y ago
  The article is a thin layer, I agree, but it adds the bit that people are mostly responding to.
meiraleal 7y ago
As if their content wasn't also commercials.
14 7y ago
On the other hand my experience with YouTube and my kids is without an Adblock they get all sorts of commercials. Why does my 2 year old need to be exposed to a Toyota ad?
OrgNet 7y ago
PBS Kids is pretty good for that too.
stuart78 7y ago
I agree that this is good, and my older child has similarly little exposure to commercials as other commenters. I found this quote, however, a bit shocking: "The average 2-5 year old is spending over 1,600 hours a year watching television" That is over four hours each day watching TV. And in my opinion, the quality of most of the programming on Netflix, Prime, etc. is not substantially higher than commercials. Like broadcast TV, many are just long-form commercials in and of themselves.
QuackingJimbo 7y ago
400 hours of commercial-watching is not being "saved" If Netflix and other streaming services didn't exist, kids would not be watching 1600 hours of terrestrial TV with ads
- jandrese 7y ago
  Citation needed. There are plenty of studies showing how kids watch way too much TV or equivalents. https://www.livestrong.com/article/222032-how-much-tv-does-the-average-child-watch-each-day/ https://www.livestrong.com/article/222032-how-much-tv-does-t...
nullwiz 7y ago
Amazing for Netflix. But if we are talking about kids, lets just not forget how much garbage ideology exists in most Netflix series (or much of TV).
avivo 7y ago
I would love to see an experiment that randomly granted people Netflix or YouTube Premium, and explore health/wealth/etc. impacts going forward. This could also be added as feature to existing large scale longitudinal studies.
legitster 7y ago
In a related note, I have come to realize the different levels of quality in children's television: - Public television shows (PBS) stuff is so lovingly created and charming. You can really tell they had experts and creatives work side by side to craft positive stories. Even if it's not particularly exciting. - Super-smart and creative shows (like the first couple seasons of Spongebob, or Gravity Falls). Great shows on their own merit, super funny and creative. But they are an art first and not necessarily focused on development. Good at clueing kids in on structuring jokes or references, not much else. - Bland and harmless. Shows that drive a story or characters, but not necessarily lovingly made or particularly funny. I have found most of the Netflix/Amazon/Hulu stuff falls in here. - Colorful garbage. It's a lights and noise show, with huge focus on licensing. Cartoons of my era are particularly susceptible to this (Dragonball Z, Yu Gi Oh, Transformers, etc).
- chrisweekly 7y ago
  Gravity Falls -- yeah! I can't stand Spongebob, but are there other shows like GF?
  - diminoten 7y ago
    Haha, saying "I can't stand Spongebob" makes me think of someone trying to critically review episodes of Spongebob Squarepants for its literary merit.
    - chrisweekly 7y ago
      heh for me, it's like dora the explorer -- just lots of noise, triggering some visceral response in me of "turn it off now, mute it, make it go away" akin to many people's aversion to certain forms of advertising, or nails on a chalkboard.
  - daned 7y ago
    Adventure Time
  - rkuykendall-com 7y ago
uhtred 7y ago
How many hours do they spend mindlessly browsing Netflix though and not actually watching anything? And is that better?
jmpman 7y ago
My kids made breakfast for Mother’s Day. During breakfast, I had them explain all the steps to my wife. One of them said they opened the “Ghost man roll”. Wait, what?? “You know daddy, the roll with the Ghost man on it”, thinking for a moment - oh, that’s the Pillsbury dough boy. A once classic American icon is now unnamed in the current generation. All thanks to NetFlix.
neovive 7y ago
The most jarring statement to me is that "kids 2-5 spend an average of 32 hours per week in front of a television set." That seems quite high for that age group. As a parent, I try to limit my kids to 2-3 hours of media per day on weekends and 0-1 hour on school nights--including TV and video games. Most of their screen time these days is a combination of Netflix and Xbox. I don't count Scratch programming or Khan Academy as screen time. I try to find a balance, knowing that I grew up watching Saturday morning cartoons and playing games on Apple II, Commodore 64 and NES.
thorwasdfasdf 7y ago
it's not just TV/shows you need to save your kids from. It's books too! Almost every kids book i open up (for my 4 year old) seems to have a Pizza, Ice cream and cookies as the 3 primary food groups that the kids or animals in that book eat. It's ridiculous.
makecheck 7y ago
People applaud the lack of commercials because of the advertising industry’s self-inflicted wound of making obnoxious ads. Ads didn’t have to try so hard to be WAY LOUDER THAN THE SHOW. They didn’t have to be trying to sell obviously-terrible things (“Get StupidDrugName! <happy music> Side effects may include: death”). They didn’t have to subject you to 12 identical copies of the same commercial in one broadcast. They didn’t have to greedily demand an increasing share, to the point of significantly reducing the length of a show. And that’s just TV...web ads have lots of avoidable crap too. They got greedy, they made ads suck, now people have no use for them.
- r00fus 7y ago
  > They got greedy, they made ads suck, now people have no use for them. Many figured this was the logical conclusion, absent regulation. Of course, the industry fought the concept of regulation or even self-regulation tooth and nail. So here we are.
safgasCVS 7y ago
Hold up. Are we saying the average kid is watching over an hour of commercials per day. If that stat is true (which would be around 4 hours of tv per day give or take) the solution is not Netflix but pumping the brakes on tv. That’s an insane amount of tv
- asdff 7y ago
  TV has been overconsumed since the 80s at least. When my parents grew up they only had a dozen or so stations, so if their show wasn't airing there wasn't a point to even turn on the TV.
philamonster 7y ago
> found that kids 2-5 spend an average of 32 hours per week in front of a television set. Children 6-11 spend 28 hours in front of a television set What?! Is this for real? Nowhere near these numbers in my house....
agentultra 7y ago
And it also sails from one show to the next seamlessly so they have no pauses and have a hard time understanding what we mean when we say, "you can watch 1 episode."
sandwall 7y ago
Yes, but this is offset by YouTube. My children are watching full length "unboxing" and (sponsored?) toy videos. -- Along with the worst "Disney" live action; bad music and they might be confused for NSFW.
acd 7y ago
So the average 2-5 year old spends 1600 hours a year watching tv, the WHO World health recommendation of TV for small children is one hour less TV is better. Here is the WHO guidelines https://www.who.int/news-room/detail/24-04-2019-to-grow-up-healthy-children-need-to-sit-less-and-play-more https://www.who.int/news-room/detail/24-04-2019-to-grow-up-h...
danielfoster 7y ago
This is great but if your child is watching so much Netflix that 400 hours worth of commercials are avoided, maybe your child is watching too much? Go play with Legos or do something interactive...
- crazygringo 7y ago
  Given how educational TV can be in teaching language skills, interpersonal skills, and basic facts, I don't think this is necessarily too much at all, if it's 2-3 hrs/day. When I was a young child before I could read books, I learned tons about the world from watching Sesame Street, Mr. Rogers, and similar high-quality shows. I still spent plenty of time with my Legos, but my childhood would definitely have been worse without the programming on PBS.
  - dpark 7y ago
    Your assumption of 1/3 is wrong and the article gives specific amounts per week and per year. It's over 4 hours a day, which is insane. 2.2 hours a day is also a lot. I think you're also overestimating the amount of meaningful education kids get from TV. Language skills are learned via use. You don't actually converse with the TV. Interpersonal skills are best learned by practice. Basic facts? Maybe the TV can help here, although most kids shows don't cover anything except pretty basic stuff. Kids shows are primarily entertainment, same as adult shows.
    - NeccoNeko 7y ago
      It isn't wrong. > The average 2-5 year old is spending over 1,600 hours a year watching television. > Ratings tracking company Nielsen reported in 2014 that the average hour of television has close to 15 minutes and 30 seconds of commercials. By their count 1/4th of each hour is commercials. 1600 * .75 / 365 == 3.3 hours per day
      - dpark 7y ago
        > It isn't wrong. In what was is it not wrong? He estimated 1/3 commercials which was wrong. He estimated 2.2 hours of TV, which is wrong regardless of whether that includes commercials and regardless of whether the commercial ratio is 1/3 or 1/4. He also went back and edited it[1] to say 2-3 hours which is still wrong, because 3.3 is not between 2 and 3. And for the record, commercials are still TV so scaling down to 3.3 is a really bizarre choice on your part. [1] Actually rewrote essentially the entire comment removing almost everything I responded to.
2T1Qka0rEiPr 7y ago
Just reading the comments here, people seem to be relishing the thought of having an utterly ad-free world. As some have pointed out however, advertising can serve a useful purpose (see: signalling, market-for-lemons etc.). From my perspective there are a number of issues with advertising which should be looked at - such as advertising to children, advertising of products with large negative externalities (e.g. cigarettes), and heavily targetted advertising (more because of the dystopian visions it brings, and with the potential complete erosion of privacy caused by the data-collection which it necessitates). But I believe a blanket "all adverts are bad" is probably a bit much. That said, giving users an alternative to receiving adverts seems like a great alternative to the pervasive data-capturing we have going on today.
irrational 7y ago
Recently we stayed at a vacation home that had cable. My 5 year old asked me why Paw Patrol kept turning off and then back on. I had no idea what she was talking about until I went and watched it with her and realized that she had no idea what commercials are. Though, we don't have Netflix (or any other streaming service), she just watched DVDs from the library to get her Paw Patrol fix.
afucher 7y ago
"saves".
mr_spothawk 7y ago
Does the article address how many hours of television do you need to watch every day to see 400 hours per year?
kouh 7y ago
Unfortunately it also saves thousands of hours of life outdoors
pcmaffey 7y ago
Shameless plug: I'm making an interactive kids' series: https://www.featherbubble.com https://www.featherbubble.com The idea is, like old-school picture books, to give space to the imagination, while introducing kids to a healthy relationship w/ technology. Hand-drawn illustrations, gentle interactivity, stories inspired by the natural world... I'm currently beta testing the pilot episode online before distributing a fully-featured app. Feedback appreciated :)
fulafel 7y ago
Many national public broadcasting companies also do this. It's good if you can have it without the disposable income for pay tv, it's often the low incone families that would otherwise end up exposing kids to a lot of ads because of single parent situatiob, lack of hobby opportunities etc.
kxter 7y ago
I haven't had cable in over 15 years. I recently tried Pluto.TV on Firestick from my usual Netflix, CBS App watching routine. I quickly realized how many darn commercials regular cable viewers have to suffer through. The repetition is insanity. cringes in disgust
_raoulcousins 7y ago
I don't have kids, but my sister's kids are watching Youtube, not Netflix. They're basically watching the same thing I am: product reviews, just different channels.
jeffdavis 7y ago
It's not all downside. Commercials are a literal break during which kids might get distracted or even do a few other small tasks. I'm not convinced that binge-watching with no breaks is ideal for anyone; let alone kids.
redindian75 7y ago
Took my 4yr old first time to Movies... he said "dont like this... can we change it?" It was a Disney movie - but he wasnt ready to sit thro character buildup etc, and complained the cartoon was too "long". I thought he lacked patience due to watching Youtube fastcut episodes (GuavaJuice and such), then I saw him watching 45mins of a hand opening candy wrappers one by one, patiently folding it, then opening the next one. I dont know what to make of it :)
josh5555 7y ago
Now the commercials are hidden within the content of the show. Is that better? I'm not so sure.
hash872 7y ago
Next step- please, someone figure out how to block ads on the radio when I'm in Uber/Lyft. I find pure audio ads really obnoxious, and I really resent paying for the ride and also being subjected to some guy screaming about low low APR at his car dealership if you act now. If I'm paying for something- no ads, please
freebear 7y ago
"The average 2-5 year old is spending over 1,600 hours a year watching television." "Saves kids", yeah right. Must be just great to spend all that time in front of the tellie eaten em tater chips and drinkin that mountain dew. Idiocracy Now!
whitlock 7y ago
The statistics cited by Local Babysitter are ten years old, collected in 2009 by Nielsen. This doesn't reflect how media has changed in the last ten years, along with how children consume it. It would be nice to have a more updated source explaining what has changed in the last ten years, since obviously Nielsen is collecting this data.
AnaniasAnanas 7y ago
And so do torrents.
anbop 7y ago
If your kids are avoiding 400 hours of commercials a year, they are watching way too fucking much Netflix.
m463 7y ago
except for netflix autoplay previews screwing things up.
HNLurker2 7y ago
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays
dboreham 7y ago
It's like being back in my childhood in the UK (commercial TV was forbidden in our house).
IloveHN84 7y ago
For all the people living frugally here: You can also use alternative YouTube clients (e.g. NewPipe) to skip all the commercials while saving money and doing it legally. Nice #ad for Netflix, I would never spend a cent on it knowing that they do geoblocking and limiting shows to specific countries because of agreements with other platforms, such as Sky. Instead, I would go for some third party Kodi Plugin and skipping the need of having 2-3 accounts to watch all the shows I want, freely.
- Y_Y 7y ago
  I've found SkyTube and MusicPiped (a cousin of Newpipe just for music) to both excellent YouTube clients, and both are naturally available on F-Droid. uBlock Origin with all the extra filters makes youtube.com tolerable on desktop.
3xblah 7y ago
"We're also curious, as children of the 90s ourselves, does a child who grew up without a continual bombardment of ads end up more susceptible to advertising later in life? Did those early days of being shown ad after ad for LIFE Cereal end up turning us all into advertising cynics? No data yet on this, but something we'll definitely be paying close attention to in the future." Meanwhile, Netflix and YouTube today are 24/7 tracking and saving a record of everything a child has watched every day of every year, with no limits on how that data can be used. Not worry. This data could never be used in a way that makes them more susceptible to advertising. There was an image with overlaid text going around on Facebook on Mother's Day that said, "Happy Mother's Day to the iPad that is raising your child."
fuzzbuzz 7y ago
Take this with a pinch of salt. Barbie™, Lego™, Paw Patrol™, Shop Kids™, and what not, have their own shows. Instead of watching a serie, with breaks of commercials, the kids watch 30 min commercials with some storie baked in it. And then there is product placement in everything else. Dont know if its better. It is deffinitly more "sneaky".
- jdashg 7y ago
  This has been the case for decades. These days Transformers just has more lens flare.
LearnProg17 7y ago
I see a lot of shows have 20 mins content for 10 mins of commercials. Does this heading mean, that kids were watching 1200 hrs of TV a year? That is almost 3+ hours a day. Isn't that too high? Note: I am not a parent.
lugg 7y ago
Most of TV is one big commercial these days so I'm not sure you can really say this sort of thing.
casper345 7y ago
Counter to this: Door to door salesman were the common occurrence. Now I do not know if the average person liked having people walk up there door, but how else would you sell something in competitive (arguable even un competitive) markets? Look at even ads in newspaper/magazines. One could argue ads took up wasted page space. What is the solution to advertisement alternatives in a capitalist society? (Genuine question) I would also say this is different than restaurants who is able to sell locally or products that can be sold with media (i.e. cartoon shows that sell related toys).
OkGoDoIt 7y ago
The last paragraph is intriguing: "We’re also curious, as children of the 90s ourselves, does a child who grew up without a continual bombardment of ads end up more susceptible to advertising later in life? Did those early days of being shown ad after ad for LIFE Cereal end up turning us all into advertising cynics? No data yet on this, but something we’ll definitely be paying close attention to in the future." I'm really good at tuning out ads online after so long seeing ads everywhere, but if I was brand new to the medium and hadn't yet learned to tune them out, would I be more likely to be influenced by them? Is that a good/bad thing? And now that I use adblock everywhere, when I do see an ad it's more annoying. It will be interesting to see the long-term effects going forward.

650 points by sharkweek 7y ago

While I'm glad that kids in Netflix-only households aren't getting bombarded with advertisements targeted at children the way kids my age were in the 1980s, I can't help but suspect that these ad-free kids need to be exposed to some advertising in an educational context so that they learn to recognize when somebody is trying to con them into buying shit they don't need and probably didn't want in the first place.

newsoul2019 7y ago
Indeed. Whenever a commercial is on, I like to ask the kids "What is this ad trying to sell you?"
nordsieck 7y ago
> I can't help but suspect that these ad-free kids need to be exposed to some advertising in an educational context so that they learn to recognize when somebody is trying to con them into buying shit they don't need and probably didn't want in the first place. Do you mean something like, the Internet? Advertising is so pervasive, you'd probably have to do something drastic like Amish style technology banning to avoid it; even that may not be enough. As a side note, even though Netflix doesn't have separate advertising, I'm sure there's at least product placement and other forms of advertising in their content.
- gibspaulding 7y ago
  Ublock origin, Netflix, Spotify, and ditching mobile apps for social media will cut out a huge percentage of adds for most people. Admittedly I haven't found a way around billboards, adds playing on gas pumps (though I try to avoid those gas stations), playing in stores, or the occasional sponsored link on some sites I visit, but compared to old TV or radio these are fairly painless.
  - acheron 7y ago
    Press (probably) the second button on the right at the gas station pump, it will mute the ad. Still plays the video but much easier to ignore. For awhile this was apparently just a hidden feature, recently I saw one where the button was labeled.
michaelt 7y ago
Then you'll be pleased to learn adverts are also available online :)
bluetidepro 7y ago
> I can't help but suspect that these ad-free kids need to be exposed to some advertising in an educational context so that they learn to recognize when somebody is trying to con them into buying shit they don't need and probably didn't want in the first place. It's not like they spend 24/7 on Netflix, they are probably getting bombed with ads more so than ever in history out in the real world. And even more so, probably even more aggressively than the commercials they are missing by using Netflix.
not_a_cop75 7y ago
Honestly, if you haven't seen the advertising now rampant in the new Netflix interface, then you haven't been paying attention. Everyday I'm bombarded with "ads" on Netflix for shows that my family wants no part of. Things that seem either offense at worst, or at best misguided as "positive" offerings are frequently shown.
- _bxg1 7y ago
  As obnoxious as this is, it's still only promoting other shows on the same service you're already paying for. It isn't convincing your kid that they need you to buy them a hundred other products, or - more importantly - seeding them with the idea of constant consumerism as a lifestyle. That said, I've made Hulu my default now specifically because of Netflix's pushy dark patterns.
  - burntoutcase 7y ago
    I've made secondhand optical media my fault because I'm sick of paying rent.
  - not_a_cop75 7y ago
    I humbly disagree. I would state that the product being sold is the lifestyle being marketed. I don't have enough in common with the Baizuo to want to watch them, copy them or imitate them.
    - _bxg1 7y ago
      I can barely even parse what you're trying to express here. It seems far-removed from the topic at hand.
      - not_a_cop75 7y ago
        When you aren't being charged for something you are the product. And when you've being fed ads even when you're being charged, guess what? You're still the product. Pay for ads in product has come a long way since AOL.
balls187 7y ago
I grew up on a military base in a foreign country, and all the television was from the Armed Forces network. There were no commercials, just random PSA. Occasionally teachers would get VHS tapes with recorded TV from the US, and we were more enthralled with the commercials than the programs themselves.
awinder 7y ago
They learn / don't learn that skill from kidfluencers on YouTube. From what I've seen with my daughter that's a super-weaponized form of advertising compared to what I grew up in, anyone who survives Ryan and turns out halfway adjusted will have made it through a real crucible.
- burntoutcase 7y ago
  > They learn / don't learn that skill from kidfluencers on YouTube. Thanks for giving me a new excuse for being a misanthrope.
  - awinder 7y ago
    LOL! It really is something to behold, this article is a pretty good rundown in what’s going on (I would think I was making this up as some fringe thing, if I had not watched it first hand) https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/01/business/media/social-media-influencers-kids.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/01/business/media/social-med...
- r00fus 7y ago
  Yeah, my kids crave youtube, but I won't let them watch it.
bzbarsky 7y ago
For what it's worth, I distinctly remember that sometime in middle school we had a unit where exactly that happened: we were shown some ads, and there was various discussion about the way ads are created, the tricks they use, etc, etc. The "elmer's glue for milk in cereal ads" bit definitely stuck with me. ;)

kailuowang 7y ago

400 hrs of commercials a year? How much TV are these kids watching a day?

gwtaylor 7y ago
The article claims nearly 4.5 hours per day. I find that hard to believe... I don't know any children (in my admittedly biased sample) that watch more than an hour or two.
- Pfhreak 7y ago
  I know families who literally leave a tv on for the kids 24/7. It's on during meals, it's on during the day, it's there as they are getting ready for bed. Just constantly on and droning away. I cannot understand that behavior. Even an hour or two a day seems like a lot for a kid to me.
  - balls187 7y ago
    Sometimes having an hour of time to yourself while your kids are watching TV is a huge boon.
- eganist 7y ago
  3:30pm-7:00pm -- homework + tv (mostly tv) OR practice. 7:00pm-8:00pm -- dinner with the family (during tv, possibly) 8:00pm-11:00pm -- homework + tv (mostly tv) 11:00pm-1:00am -- tv --- Even including sports practice, we've cracked over five hours, and that's from when I was in grade school.
  - mrguyorama 7y ago
    It's interesting to me that you would stay up until 1 am as a grade schooler. That is quite late
    - eganist 7y ago
      I pulled all-nighters in grade school to maximize my media intake (in this case browsing message boards) while still getting homework done. Guessing kids these days do the same to stay on top of snap, insta, tiktok, reddit, etc.

throwaway66666 7y ago

Netflix puts the ads directly inside the shows they control themselves. This way no adblock can censor them, and Netflix can prance around pretending they are saints for not showing ads. Example "Hey let's call an uber" says character A. "I watched X on netflix yesterday" says character B.

pavel_lishin 7y ago
You choose the shows your kids watch; you don't get to choose what commercials a cable/airwave channel shows you.
- throwaway66666 7y ago
  I am not saying cable is better. I am saying that netflix has a lot of hidden marketing in their shows (for adults, I don't have kids and I don' watch kids shows) that praising them for being ad-free is kinda disgenious. In the end of the day I 'd rather get a big blinking "this is an ad" banner on my ads, rather than the characters smirking on camera while drinking from a nescafe cup while waiting for an uber to arrive. Maybe those are not actual ads and the show writers just added uber and nescafe for narrative purposes, I don't know, because it doesn't tell us.
  - jimcsharp 7y ago
    >netflix has a lot of hidden marketing in their shows I really believe there's hidden cigarette marketing. Maybe directors are just taking artistic license that they can't on cable, but it just really feels like there's a noticeable increase of on-screen smoking in a lot of their originals.
    - filoleg 7y ago
      Maybe, but I honestly feel like it just coincides with the whole neo-noir and lazy-noir genre coming back, where smoking/drinking at very regular intervals throughout the day is a staple. Part of the reason I feel this way is the fact that I was never able to tell or even notice the brand of cigarettes the characters were smoking.

bargl 7y ago

Worth. Every. Penny. I went to my parents house with my son. He was 4. They turned on cartoons. Then he said, "Dad why'd you change the show? I don't want to watch this." It was a commercial. I had to explain commercials to my son. It was at that moment I realized how much of my tv watching as a kid was commercials.

saluki 7y ago
Same my son grew up on Netflix, we were watching the Super Bowl on OTA tv when he was 5 and he asked the same thing, what's this? Oh that's a commercial. He also picked up that when we search a toy on amazon, afterward there would be an ad on the side of YouTube for the same toy, he pointed and asked how they did that. This was around the same time, he was 5 or 6.
lmkg 7y ago
To be fair, my favorite show growing up was Transformers. So technically even the show itself was a commercial.
- Insanity 7y ago
  That probably goes for a lot of shows for kids :)
  - smhenderson 7y ago
    I'd say if a kids show is not on public television it most likely is a commercial for a toy or a vehicle for a number of other ads for unrelated toys. And even for me and my five year old, there is plenty of Danial Tiger gear out there to buy! The difference is they make and sell the toys but they don't advertise them during the show. It's not much but that subtle difference is what allows me to sit down and watch 30 - 60 minutes of these shows a few times a week with her. As others have mentioned, even NetFlix "sells toys", just not overtly like network TV does. But just watching PJ Max, Trolls, etc. makes my five year old grand daughter want everything she sees when we go to any store that has these shows' stuff for sale. Both of them are still better than numbing their minds with 8-12 minutes of intense, flashy commercials for every 30 minute show they watch though.

duxup 7y ago

Even if just for my own sanity ... I like the lack of commercials and the resulting stable levels of volume. My kids don't watch a lot of TV / screen time but when they do I want to be able to monitor it, and yet also maintain my own sanity.

moate 7y ago
Oh my god this! Why is is so hard to balance the audio between commercials and shows?
- duxup 7y ago
  It's not hard, they don't want to do it, they want loud commercials to get your attention.

davidy123 7y ago

This is a step in the right direction. Still, Netflix &c force a lot of content of their own choosing through suggestions and highlighted content, using ever invasive techniques, like auto play, to force that content on users. A service that only ever showed content that someone specifically requested would be an improvement.

jeffrallen 7y ago
To turn off auto-play, login on a computer, not Apple TV. Go to Accounts, Profile, Playback settings. For kids accounts it is different. Get into the help pages, and from there the kids profile's playback options ate available. Very confusing, only found it by chance while chatting with the support people.

DanFeldman 7y ago

Good riddance. The last time I watched TV with ads was for the superbowl, and even those nicely produced ads I found absolutely grating. There's no way I can go back to ads between tense moments in TV shows. It's like seeing the internet with an adblocker for the first time.

mrec 7y ago
Similar thing here - the only time I now encounter video-ads-making-noise is at the cinema before a film, and it's becoming unpleasant enough there that I've largely stopped going to the cinema. It's not (or not just) that they're getting worse, it's that once the familiarity wears off you can't help but see how psychologically damaging and hostile they are.
- lone_haxx0r 7y ago
  > once the familiarity wears off you can't help but see how psychologically damaging and hostile they are. Same thing happens to me with TV news. I used to watch them, but now, everytime someone else is watching, I can't help but see how much they manipulate the content to their convenience, and how much they blatantly lie.
  - airstrike 7y ago
    > Same thing happens to me with TV news. I used to watch them, but now, everytime someone else is watching, I can't help but see how much they manipulate the content to their convenience, and how much they blatantly lie. This, one billion times. I don't care which network or show you watch, or which newspaper you read, they are all lying. They are all pushing an agenda very clearly. I mostly make do with Bloomberg, WSJ and NPR. I can't even read the NY Times these days.
  - peatmoss 7y ago
    PBS Newshour. Clarification: PBS Newshour is as much (national / international) news as you need in a day, and doesn’t sensationalize.
- 7y ago

xfitm3 7y ago

I think advertisements and overstimulation is going to lead to serious mental health issues. It’s already presenting with people who lose their social media accounts or followers, and that’s arguably short term effects. We’ll need more time to see long term effects.

2ion 7y ago

Which then they spend watching 400 more hours entertainment with product placements. Infinite jest, this is.

blobbers 7y ago

The average 2-5 year old is spending over 1,600 hours a year watching television. This seems nuts to me. That is 4.5 hours a day! For a 2 year old? Who are these parents...

moate 7y ago
Average parents?
- apetresc 7y ago
  That just can't be the average. That must be the very top of the curve. For it to be the average, with the very bi-modal distribution coming from parents who have no-screens policies, the average in that other cluster would have to be like 8 hours a day. I just don't believe that's possible with any frequency.
  - silversconfused 7y ago
    Top of the curve is closer to 16-20 hours a day. As in, if they didn't fall asleep, it'd literally be 24 hours. Lots of parents let their kids eat and sleep in front of the tv, and that's nothing new to this generation.
  - sampleinajar 7y ago
    What's the methodology? If the tv is on is that counted regardless of whether kids are actively watching or not? I could see a tv on all day skewing numbers easily.
  - moate 7y ago
    I mean "mean" parents, not median parents. Sure, there's no-screen policy parents, but those feel (citation needed!) like a less common occurrence than "some" or "unrestricted" screen parents. If no-screen parents only represent 10% of the total population, they're not going to do as much pulling the number down as you might think. There's no way there's an equal distribution on this stuff among between "none" and "some" so they won't weight as heavily towards lowering the curve. Also, it's a pretty wide age range. What people allow a 2 year old vs a 5 year old to do/consume is a world apart. There's all sorts of things that go into it. I agree, without deep diving into methodology, these numbers are a whole lot of "but what does this actually MEAN"?

blobbers 7y ago

"The average 2-5 year old is spending over 1,600 hours a year watching television." This seems nuts to me. That is 4.5 hours a day! For a 2 year old? Who are these parents...

aczerepinski 7y ago
Childcare is super expensive. I think there are a ton of people who can’t afford it and use screen time to supplement. It keeps the kid safe in one spot while you can get stuff done. Keep in mind that letting a child play outside by themselves is essentially illegal.
- jak92 7y ago
  > child play outside by themselves is essentially illegal. No it's not.
  - aczerepinski 7y ago
    I encourage you to google it. People get arrested all around the country for letting their kids play in the park across the street, ride their bike around the block, sit in the car alone at the bank, etc.
    - WhompingWindows 7y ago
      What are the rates of arrest? I've seen a couple reports, but n=2 is not a data set.
    - mehrdadn 7y ago
      Probably depends on the area and other factors... in my area it was totally normal for kids to walk some half a mile to a mile home in middle school just over a decade ago and I don't think it's changed. I think even elementary school was normal with possibly a smaller distance (not sure how far kids went, but a couple blocks was fine).
      - 7y ago

makk 7y ago

Or, turning off the screens saves kids from 100% of commercials a year. Something about articles like this make me want to vomit.

blobbers 7y ago
Great root cause analysis. Wish more people would think like this.
kikoreis 7y ago
You beat me to it. A lot of the comments here underscore how much better it is (which I don't doubt) without seeming to acknowledge that ads are very likely to come -- in fact, didn't they test already last year? Yeah, https://thenextweb.com/contributors/2018/10/20/netflix-tests-ads/ https://thenextweb.com/contributors/2018/10/20/netflix-tests...

Balvarez 7y ago

Give them time, They'll add commercials. At one time cable didn't have commercials.

kyranjamie 7y ago

A hugely positive statistic. Next, calculate the savings to parents, in advertised toys that haven't been bought.

luckydata 7y ago

It's true but I don't like how I can't filter content for my son. He's 4yo and is a little prone to act in real life like the characters in the cartoons do and I would like to at least temporarily filter things that have fighting in it (like power rangers) because he tends to fight his classmates (they like it, the teachers give us endless grief about it). No way to do that and it seems like a pretty basic form of control that should be table stakes for a kids oriented service.

dqpb 7y ago
Keep him away from YouTube then. They have an outbreak of "kids shows" designed to corrupt and traumatize the minds of children.
- detaro 7y ago
  At least you can fill a hard disk with content downloaded from YouTube quite easily, and restrict selection that way.
  - jerf 7y ago
    YouTube with the "parent firewall" is an awesome resource. "Hey, Dad, what other kinds of carnivorous plants are there?" "Give me a sec here... no... no... no... ah, National Geographic, that'll work." "Hey Dad, what does the Earth look like from the space station?" "Hey Dad, what's a lemur?" Amazing tool. YouTube with kids wandering around on their own is scary.
nhumrich 7y ago
Yes! This all day long. I want either a whitelist or blacklist for shows on netflix children accounts. Amazon prime kidtime lets you do this for their tablets (even though the feature is very hidden), and its awesome.
- ceejayoz 7y ago
  Netflix permits blacklisting on kids' accounts. I've very happily used it to suppress the especially inane stuff. (Account > Parental controls > Restrict specific titles)

SpaceInvader 7y ago

Year and a half ago[0] it was 230 hours. Are there more commercials in tv nowadays? [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15990559 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15990559

jerf 7y ago
My wife and I buy a couple of relatively popular TV series on Amazon to watch them without commercials. I've been watching the minute count on a "half-hour" TV series creep down over the years... 23 minutes... 22 minutes... current "best" record I've personally witnessed is 18 minutes, but stay tuned. If someone replied with a 16 or a 17 example I wouldn't be shocked. I'm wondering if the TV companies will experience some modicum of shame around the 15 minute mark.
- SpaceInvader 7y ago
  Huh, I'm glad I don't watch tv at all. Such a waste of time and brainwash too.

jstewartmobile 7y ago

It's nice to see that they've discovered a profitable way to make people retarded without resorting to ads.

jonstewart 7y ago

It’s terrifying that kids watch so much TV that they could save hundreds of hours a year by not watching commercials.

throwaway55554 7y ago

That's over an hour of commercials per day? WTF? That's a LOT of screen time.

wil421 7y ago

They’ll save you from commercials but they’re not afraid of producing shows that are lower quality than some of the “good” commercials.

meddlepal 7y ago

Sub-headline: Kids waste those 400 hours playing Fortnite.

kxter 7y ago
or Kingdom Hearts, or Mortal Combat... ;)

onemoresoop 7y ago

Commercials are for the mind what spam e-mail is for your inbox, you can delete them but they'll annoy the hell of you. Of course it's not a good analogy as commercials are paying for the content but the problem is the quantity and quality. In the US I normally turn off volume when there is a commercial or avoid commercial content at all costs. However, when I visit my friends in Europe I find that their (TV) commercial a lot more enjoyable. Anybody else experienced this as well?

nickreese 7y ago

What a terribly thin affiliate site? How'd this get front-paged? Why aren't we linking to the study instead of the summary of the study? http://www.med.umich.edu/yourchild/topics/tv http://www.med.umich.edu/yourchild/topics/tv

dang 7y ago
The article is a thin layer, I agree, but it adds the bit that people are mostly responding to.

meiraleal 7y ago

As if their content wasn't also commercials.

14 7y ago

On the other hand my experience with YouTube and my kids is without an Adblock they get all sorts of commercials. Why does my 2 year old need to be exposed to a Toyota ad?

OrgNet 7y ago

PBS Kids is pretty good for that too.

stuart78 7y ago

I agree that this is good, and my older child has similarly little exposure to commercials as other commenters. I found this quote, however, a bit shocking: "The average 2-5 year old is spending over 1,600 hours a year watching television" That is over four hours each day watching TV. And in my opinion, the quality of most of the programming on Netflix, Prime, etc. is not substantially higher than commercials. Like broadcast TV, many are just long-form commercials in and of themselves.

QuackingJimbo 7y ago

400 hours of commercial-watching is not being "saved" If Netflix and other streaming services didn't exist, kids would not be watching 1600 hours of terrestrial TV with ads

jandrese 7y ago
Citation needed. There are plenty of studies showing how kids watch way too much TV or equivalents. https://www.livestrong.com/article/222032-how-much-tv-does-the-average-child-watch-each-day/ https://www.livestrong.com/article/222032-how-much-tv-does-t...

nullwiz 7y ago

Amazing for Netflix. But if we are talking about kids, lets just not forget how much garbage ideology exists in most Netflix series (or much of TV).

avivo 7y ago

I would love to see an experiment that randomly granted people Netflix or YouTube Premium, and explore health/wealth/etc. impacts going forward. This could also be added as feature to existing large scale longitudinal studies.

legitster 7y ago

In a related note, I have come to realize the different levels of quality in children's television: - Public television shows (PBS) stuff is so lovingly created and charming. You can really tell they had experts and creatives work side by side to craft positive stories. Even if it's not particularly exciting. - Super-smart and creative shows (like the first couple seasons of Spongebob, or Gravity Falls). Great shows on their own merit, super funny and creative. But they are an art first and not necessarily focused on development. Good at clueing kids in on structuring jokes or references, not much else. - Bland and harmless. Shows that drive a story or characters, but not necessarily lovingly made or particularly funny. I have found most of the Netflix/Amazon/Hulu stuff falls in here. - Colorful garbage. It's a lights and noise show, with huge focus on licensing. Cartoons of my era are particularly susceptible to this (Dragonball Z, Yu Gi Oh, Transformers, etc).

chrisweekly 7y ago
Gravity Falls -- yeah! I can't stand Spongebob, but are there other shows like GF?
- diminoten 7y ago
  Haha, saying "I can't stand Spongebob" makes me think of someone trying to critically review episodes of Spongebob Squarepants for its literary merit.
  - chrisweekly 7y ago
    heh for me, it's like dora the explorer -- just lots of noise, triggering some visceral response in me of "turn it off now, mute it, make it go away" akin to many people's aversion to certain forms of advertising, or nails on a chalkboard.
- daned 7y ago
  Adventure Time
- rkuykendall-com 7y ago

uhtred 7y ago

How many hours do they spend mindlessly browsing Netflix though and not actually watching anything? And is that better?

jmpman 7y ago

My kids made breakfast for Mother’s Day. During breakfast, I had them explain all the steps to my wife. One of them said they opened the “Ghost man roll”. Wait, what?? “You know daddy, the roll with the Ghost man on it”, thinking for a moment - oh, that’s the Pillsbury dough boy. A once classic American icon is now unnamed in the current generation. All thanks to NetFlix.

neovive 7y ago

The most jarring statement to me is that "kids 2-5 spend an average of 32 hours per week in front of a television set." That seems quite high for that age group. As a parent, I try to limit my kids to 2-3 hours of media per day on weekends and 0-1 hour on school nights--including TV and video games. Most of their screen time these days is a combination of Netflix and Xbox. I don't count Scratch programming or Khan Academy as screen time. I try to find a balance, knowing that I grew up watching Saturday morning cartoons and playing games on Apple II, Commodore 64 and NES.

thorwasdfasdf 7y ago

it's not just TV/shows you need to save your kids from. It's books too! Almost every kids book i open up (for my 4 year old) seems to have a Pizza, Ice cream and cookies as the 3 primary food groups that the kids or animals in that book eat. It's ridiculous.

makecheck 7y ago

People applaud the lack of commercials because of the advertising industry’s self-inflicted wound of making obnoxious ads. Ads didn’t have to try so hard to be WAY LOUDER THAN THE SHOW. They didn’t have to be trying to sell obviously-terrible things (“Get StupidDrugName! <happy music> Side effects may include: death”). They didn’t have to subject you to 12 identical copies of the same commercial in one broadcast. They didn’t have to greedily demand an increasing share, to the point of significantly reducing the length of a show. And that’s just TV...web ads have lots of avoidable crap too. They got greedy, they made ads suck, now people have no use for them.

r00fus 7y ago
> They got greedy, they made ads suck, now people have no use for them. Many figured this was the logical conclusion, absent regulation. Of course, the industry fought the concept of regulation or even self-regulation tooth and nail. So here we are.

safgasCVS 7y ago

Hold up. Are we saying the average kid is watching over an hour of commercials per day. If that stat is true (which would be around 4 hours of tv per day give or take) the solution is not Netflix but pumping the brakes on tv. That’s an insane amount of tv

asdff 7y ago
TV has been overconsumed since the 80s at least. When my parents grew up they only had a dozen or so stations, so if their show wasn't airing there wasn't a point to even turn on the TV.

philamonster 7y ago

> found that kids 2-5 spend an average of 32 hours per week in front of a television set. Children 6-11 spend 28 hours in front of a television set What?! Is this for real? Nowhere near these numbers in my house....

agentultra 7y ago

And it also sails from one show to the next seamlessly so they have no pauses and have a hard time understanding what we mean when we say, "you can watch 1 episode."

sandwall 7y ago

Yes, but this is offset by YouTube. My children are watching full length "unboxing" and (sponsored?) toy videos. -- Along with the worst "Disney" live action; bad music and they might be confused for NSFW.

acd 7y ago

So the average 2-5 year old spends 1600 hours a year watching tv, the WHO World health recommendation of TV for small children is one hour less TV is better. Here is the WHO guidelines https://www.who.int/news-room/detail/24-04-2019-to-grow-up-healthy-children-need-to-sit-less-and-play-more https://www.who.int/news-room/detail/24-04-2019-to-grow-up-h...

danielfoster 7y ago

This is great but if your child is watching so much Netflix that 400 hours worth of commercials are avoided, maybe your child is watching too much? Go play with Legos or do something interactive...

crazygringo 7y ago
Given how educational TV can be in teaching language skills, interpersonal skills, and basic facts, I don't think this is necessarily too much at all, if it's 2-3 hrs/day. When I was a young child before I could read books, I learned tons about the world from watching Sesame Street, Mr. Rogers, and similar high-quality shows. I still spent plenty of time with my Legos, but my childhood would definitely have been worse without the programming on PBS.
- dpark 7y ago
  Your assumption of 1/3 is wrong and the article gives specific amounts per week and per year. It's over 4 hours a day, which is insane. 2.2 hours a day is also a lot. I think you're also overestimating the amount of meaningful education kids get from TV. Language skills are learned via use. You don't actually converse with the TV. Interpersonal skills are best learned by practice. Basic facts? Maybe the TV can help here, although most kids shows don't cover anything except pretty basic stuff. Kids shows are primarily entertainment, same as adult shows.
  - NeccoNeko 7y ago
    It isn't wrong. > The average 2-5 year old is spending over 1,600 hours a year watching television. > Ratings tracking company Nielsen reported in 2014 that the average hour of television has close to 15 minutes and 30 seconds of commercials. By their count 1/4th of each hour is commercials. 1600 * .75 / 365 == 3.3 hours per day
    - dpark 7y ago
      > It isn't wrong. In what was is it not wrong? He estimated 1/3 commercials which was wrong. He estimated 2.2 hours of TV, which is wrong regardless of whether that includes commercials and regardless of whether the commercial ratio is 1/3 or 1/4. He also went back and edited it[1] to say 2-3 hours which is still wrong, because 3.3 is not between 2 and 3. And for the record, commercials are still TV so scaling down to 3.3 is a really bizarre choice on your part. [1] Actually rewrote essentially the entire comment removing almost everything I responded to.

2T1Qka0rEiPr 7y ago

Just reading the comments here, people seem to be relishing the thought of having an utterly ad-free world. As some have pointed out however, advertising can serve a useful purpose (see: signalling, market-for-lemons etc.). From my perspective there are a number of issues with advertising which should be looked at - such as advertising to children, advertising of products with large negative externalities (e.g. cigarettes), and heavily targetted advertising (more because of the dystopian visions it brings, and with the potential complete erosion of privacy caused by the data-collection which it necessitates). But I believe a blanket "all adverts are bad" is probably a bit much. That said, giving users an alternative to receiving adverts seems like a great alternative to the pervasive data-capturing we have going on today.

irrational 7y ago

Recently we stayed at a vacation home that had cable. My 5 year old asked me why Paw Patrol kept turning off and then back on. I had no idea what she was talking about until I went and watched it with her and realized that she had no idea what commercials are. Though, we don't have Netflix (or any other streaming service), she just watched DVDs from the library to get her Paw Patrol fix.

afucher 7y ago

"saves".

mr_spothawk 7y ago

Does the article address how many hours of television do you need to watch every day to see 400 hours per year?

kouh 7y ago

Unfortunately it also saves thousands of hours of life outdoors

pcmaffey 7y ago

Shameless plug: I'm making an interactive kids' series: https://www.featherbubble.com https://www.featherbubble.com The idea is, like old-school picture books, to give space to the imagination, while introducing kids to a healthy relationship w/ technology. Hand-drawn illustrations, gentle interactivity, stories inspired by the natural world... I'm currently beta testing the pilot episode online before distributing a fully-featured app. Feedback appreciated :)

fulafel 7y ago

Many national public broadcasting companies also do this. It's good if you can have it without the disposable income for pay tv, it's often the low incone families that would otherwise end up exposing kids to a lot of ads because of single parent situatiob, lack of hobby opportunities etc.

kxter 7y ago

I haven't had cable in over 15 years. I recently tried Pluto.TV on Firestick from my usual Netflix, CBS App watching routine. I quickly realized how many darn commercials regular cable viewers have to suffer through. The repetition is insanity. cringes in disgust

_raoulcousins 7y ago

I don't have kids, but my sister's kids are watching Youtube, not Netflix. They're basically watching the same thing I am: product reviews, just different channels.

jeffdavis 7y ago

It's not all downside. Commercials are a literal break during which kids might get distracted or even do a few other small tasks. I'm not convinced that binge-watching with no breaks is ideal for anyone; let alone kids.

redindian75 7y ago

Took my 4yr old first time to Movies... he said "dont like this... can we change it?" It was a Disney movie - but he wasnt ready to sit thro character buildup etc, and complained the cartoon was too "long". I thought he lacked patience due to watching Youtube fastcut episodes (GuavaJuice and such), then I saw him watching 45mins of a hand opening candy wrappers one by one, patiently folding it, then opening the next one. I dont know what to make of it :)

josh5555 7y ago

Now the commercials are hidden within the content of the show. Is that better? I'm not so sure.

hash872 7y ago

Next step- please, someone figure out how to block ads on the radio when I'm in Uber/Lyft. I find pure audio ads really obnoxious, and I really resent paying for the ride and also being subjected to some guy screaming about low low APR at his car dealership if you act now. If I'm paying for something- no ads, please

freebear 7y ago

"The average 2-5 year old is spending over 1,600 hours a year watching television." "Saves kids", yeah right. Must be just great to spend all that time in front of the tellie eaten em tater chips and drinkin that mountain dew. Idiocracy Now!

whitlock 7y ago

The statistics cited by Local Babysitter are ten years old, collected in 2009 by Nielsen. This doesn't reflect how media has changed in the last ten years, along with how children consume it. It would be nice to have a more updated source explaining what has changed in the last ten years, since obviously Nielsen is collecting this data.

AnaniasAnanas 7y ago

And so do torrents.

anbop 7y ago

If your kids are avoiding 400 hours of commercials a year, they are watching way too fucking much Netflix.

m463 7y ago

except for netflix autoplay previews screwing things up.

HNLurker2 7y ago

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays

dboreham 7y ago

It's like being back in my childhood in the UK (commercial TV was forbidden in our house).

IloveHN84 7y ago

For all the people living frugally here: You can also use alternative YouTube clients (e.g. NewPipe) to skip all the commercials while saving money and doing it legally. Nice #ad for Netflix, I would never spend a cent on it knowing that they do geoblocking and limiting shows to specific countries because of agreements with other platforms, such as Sky. Instead, I would go for some third party Kodi Plugin and skipping the need of having 2-3 accounts to watch all the shows I want, freely.

Y_Y 7y ago
I've found SkyTube and MusicPiped (a cousin of Newpipe just for music) to both excellent YouTube clients, and both are naturally available on F-Droid. uBlock Origin with all the extra filters makes youtube.com tolerable on desktop.

3xblah 7y ago

"We're also curious, as children of the 90s ourselves, does a child who grew up without a continual bombardment of ads end up more susceptible to advertising later in life? Did those early days of being shown ad after ad for LIFE Cereal end up turning us all into advertising cynics? No data yet on this, but something we'll definitely be paying close attention to in the future." Meanwhile, Netflix and YouTube today are 24/7 tracking and saving a record of everything a child has watched every day of every year, with no limits on how that data can be used. Not worry. This data could never be used in a way that makes them more susceptible to advertising. There was an image with overlaid text going around on Facebook on Mother's Day that said, "Happy Mother's Day to the iPad that is raising your child."

fuzzbuzz 7y ago

Take this with a pinch of salt. Barbie™, Lego™, Paw Patrol™, Shop Kids™, and what not, have their own shows. Instead of watching a serie, with breaks of commercials, the kids watch 30 min commercials with some storie baked in it. And then there is product placement in everything else. Dont know if its better. It is deffinitly more "sneaky".

jdashg 7y ago
This has been the case for decades. These days Transformers just has more lens flare.

LearnProg17 7y ago

I see a lot of shows have 20 mins content for 10 mins of commercials. Does this heading mean, that kids were watching 1200 hrs of TV a year? That is almost 3+ hours a day. Isn't that too high? Note: I am not a parent.

lugg 7y ago

Most of TV is one big commercial these days so I'm not sure you can really say this sort of thing.

casper345 7y ago

Counter to this: Door to door salesman were the common occurrence. Now I do not know if the average person liked having people walk up there door, but how else would you sell something in competitive (arguable even un competitive) markets? Look at even ads in newspaper/magazines. One could argue ads took up wasted page space. What is the solution to advertisement alternatives in a capitalist society? (Genuine question) I would also say this is different than restaurants who is able to sell locally or products that can be sold with media (i.e. cartoon shows that sell related toys).

OkGoDoIt 7y ago

The last paragraph is intriguing: "We’re also curious, as children of the 90s ourselves, does a child who grew up without a continual bombardment of ads end up more susceptible to advertising later in life? Did those early days of being shown ad after ad for LIFE Cereal end up turning us all into advertising cynics? No data yet on this, but something we’ll definitely be paying close attention to in the future." I'm really good at tuning out ads online after so long seeing ads everywhere, but if I was brand new to the medium and hadn't yet learned to tune them out, would I be more likely to be influenced by them? Is that a good/bad thing? And now that I use adblock everywhere, when I do see an ad it's more annoying. It will be interesting to see the long-term effects going forward.