Minors spend ‘2 hours with phones’

ISTANBUL

Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Arınç (C) is seen with children during a conference titled ‘First Children and Media Congress of Turkey’ in Istanbul. Meanwhile, almost half of the minors have a mobile phone, a recent shows. AA photo

Children over six years old spend over two hours using their mobile phones every day, and spend almost two hours watching television, according to a survey conducted by the Radio and Television Supreme Council (RTÜK) among over 4,000 students across Turkey.

The students, aged between six and 18 years old, spend a daily average of two hours 39 minutes with their mobile phones, while they watch television for an average of one hour 55 minutes, according to the survey, titled “Children’s Use of Media in Turkey.”

The respondents said they used their mobile phones mainly for conversation, secondly for texting, thirdly for the Internet, and finally for connecting to social networks. 

“Television and radio are not the main communication tools for children anymore. The Internet and mobile phones have overtaken them. Thus, I believe it would be more appropriate to make projects in which the effects of the Internet and mobile phones are primarily discussed,” RTÜK President Davut Dursun said yesterday, announcing the results of the survey at a conference titled “First Children and Media Congress of Turkey.” 

Respondents spend one hour 48 minutes on the Internet on average per day, they also use tablets and computers without the Internet for one hour 30 minutes, according to the survey, which was conducted among 4,306 students in 26 cities across Turkey via face to face interviews. 

Although only 45 percent of students said the mobile phones were their “most important communication method,” the most time is spent using mobile phones on average. Some 98 percent of students said they had a television in their house, while as many as 40 percent said they had a television in their own bedroom, the survey said.

Almost half of respondents, 46.3 percent, own a mobile phone, while a majority of those students who have a mobile phone, 75.5 percent, said their mobiles had an Internet connection.

The survey also revealed that the radio is not very popular among the students. A majority of students, 66.4 percent, said they did not listen to radio, while 26.6 percent said they “sometimes” listened to the radio. 

Reading as an extracurricular activity is also popular among students, according to the survey, with 81.5 percent of respondents saying they read books other than textbooks and homework books. Only 7.9 percent of students said they never read books, newspapers or magazines. Thirty percent of high school students said they did not like reading at all.