Watching TV is the top activity among Turkish teenage girls, TÜİK says

The study, which probes data on the social activities and daily routines of teenage girls in Turkey, aged between 13 and 19, found that their most popular leisure and cultural activity is watching television. For boys this is even higher, standing at 94 percent. 

“Reading books, visiting relatives, visiting friends, and spending time on social media followed watching TV as the most popular activity for teenage girls,” the study showed. 

The research also showed that teenage girls in Turkey spend an average of 25 minutes on hobbies and games per day. This figure is 59 minutes among teenage boys. 

The study also found that teenage girls spend most time on educational activities with 3 hours 11 minutes per day on average. Education was followed by eating and other personal care activities with 2 hours 43 minutes per day on average.

Teenage girls spend the least amount of time on sports and outdoor sports activities with just seven minutes per day on average, according to the research. 

The study also investigated education-related trends of Turkish teenage girls, evaluating their most preferred departments of higher education. 

In Turkey, over 300,000 females were newly admitted in undergraduate programs in the 2014/2015 academic year, with some 27.3 percent of them admitted into business and administration departments. 

Those departments were followed by social and behavioral science with 17.1 percent, and teacher training and education science with 11.5 percent, according to the study.  

The study also revealed figures on marriages among girls, which continues to be a pressing issue in Turkey, particularly in the country’s eastern and southeastern provinces. 

“In our country, the mean age at first marriage for females increased to 23.9 in 2015 from 23.3 in 2011. According to the marriage statistics derived from the Central Civil Registration System database, the proportion of female child legal marriages covering the 16-17 age group girls in total legal marriages decreased to 5.2 percent in 2015 from 5.8 percent in 2014,” the report said. 

It added that the southeastern province of Kilis has the highest number of female child marriages with 15.3 percent, followed by Kars and Ağrı. The provinces with the lowest proportion of child marriages were Tunceli with 1 percent, Rize with 1.5 percent, and Trabzon with 1.6 percent.