A new study from Extreamist has good new for parents: kids these days are watching 150 fewer hours of commercials per year on average thanks to the rise of streaming services. Yes, at a time when there are more commercials per hour of television than ever before and some shows are even being slyly sped up to jam more advertisements in, services like Netflix and Hulu are keeping hundreds of hours of advertising out of the eyes of children.
The study gets its numbers from new data about how much streaming children are doing. According to their study, kids 2-18 are watching an average of 1.8 hours of content on streaming services per day, or more than 650 hours per year. Considering each hour of TV has 14 minutes of advertising, this means that switching from traditional TV viewing to streaming services would stop kids from seeing about 150 hours of commercials over the course of a year.
Of course, not all streaming services are created equal, and some—like Hulu Plus and YouTube—still air commercials for certain plans. Still, this is sure to be welcome news to parents who are concerned about how advertising affects their children. Children's advertising has long been a concern for government officials, as kids' impressionability makes it easier to market things towards them. This includes highly unhealthy things like soda, sugary breakfast cereals, and even—back in the day—cigarettes.
We'll have to see if the rise of streaming ends up changing these kids' shopping habits down the line, but for now, we can at least be happy that there's one area of our lives where advertising's influence is waning.
