Kids watch services like Netflix 15 times as much as they play outdoors

Stranger Things Stand By Me

Playing outside is often thought of as a staple of a kid's fantasy world, facilitating battles with dragons and encounters with far-off lands.

But nowadays, children's time is dominated by screens, particularly streaming video services like Netflix.

Last week, we took a look at data from Exstreamist that showed the average child between ages 2 and 18 streams about 1.8 hours a day of content from Netflix, Hulu, YouTube, and other online services.

That's a whopping 650 hours a year.

After our article, the team at CordCutting.com decided to put that number in perspective. They looked at data from the National Wildlife Federation, which said that, excluding structured activities, American kids spend an average of only four to seven minutes playing outdoors per day (2010).

That's 15 to 27 times less than they now spend watching streaming services like Netflix.

It's good to note that this stat doesn't include structured time outdoors, such as time spent playing on a sports team. But it does capture something about how the driver of children's imaginations probably isn't outdoor play time, but rather, the screen.

Here's a chart from CordCutting.com:

playing outdoors vs watching netflix