
Netflix Saves Kids from Up to 400 Hours of Commercials a Year - sharkweek
https://localbabysitter.com/netflix-saves-our-kids-from-up-to-400-hours-of-commercials-a-year/
======
bargl
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.

~~~
anoncow
After subscribing to YouTube Premium, I had a similar revelation. Now if only
we could have a google ad-free subscription which would turn off all google
search and display network ads, our lives would be so much better! What if we
could have cities outlaw advertising on billboards and instead collect a small
tax to make up for the lost revenue, how much would our quality of life
increase? That makes me wonder, if we could ever get to such an utopia, what
avenues would advertisers have left to sell products to us?

~~~
vincnetas
São Paulo is the city without outdoor advertisements.

Random link: [https://99percentinvisible.org/article/clean-city-law-
secret...](https://99percentinvisible.org/article/clean-city-law-secrets-sao-
paulo-uncovered-outdoor-advertising-ban/)

~~~
baddox
Seems odd to also remove what appear to be signs for retail businesses on the
walls of the business itself, but maybe I’m interpreting the before and after
images incorrectly.

~~~
emp_
Those are allowed but have limited dimensions, doesn't matter the size of your
storefront you can only have a logo of a certain size, lots of loopholes like
the McDonald's M or putting huge logos inside a glass wall but in general it
is followed.

------
DanFeldman
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
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
> 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
> 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.

------
blobbers
"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
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
> _child play outside by themselves is essentially illegal._

No it's not.

~~~
aczerepinski
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.

~~~
kilo_bravo_3
The fact that "a handful of people" in "several places" over "the last 20
years" becomes "People get arrested all around the country" like it's an
epidemic or something is one of many negative, and one of the worst, things
about the internet.

That and the fact that "oh and then the charges were dropped and in some cases
local laws changed" is inevitably (I think purposefully) left out.

Reason.com went on a year-long bender of self-promotion and half-truthing
about 3 years ago when three women were arrested in three states, claiming
that "jack-booted big gubmint was comin to take yer kerdz" and plastered
people's pictures and stories on fundraising materials and tried to get people
to buy their "free range kids" books, as though three incidents in a country
of 300 million was an epidemic.

Of course, the most confusing thing about all of this is that a Venn diagram
of "people who think that the government is rounding up mothers all over the
country" and "people who immediately, vocally, and vociferously criticize the
government for NOT protecting the welfare of children" is a perfect circle.

~~~
fyz
This seems true, and also I think there's some nuance lost in the stats as
well.

My personal experience as a parent is that my kids don't get nearly the amount
of independence that I did at their age. A reasonable part of this is that I
am afraid that my kids will get taken away. My preference is towards the
free(r)-range style of parenting, so the ex-post stats don't convey the full
effect that the small sample size of reported "big gubmint takeaways" has.

------
legitster
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
Gravity Falls -- yeah! I can't stand Spongebob, but are there other shows like
GF?

~~~
diminoten
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
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.

------
nickreese
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
The article is a thin layer, I agree, but it adds the bit that people are
mostly responding to.

------
throwaway66666
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.

~~~
bargl
This is ALL over so many shows on cable TV. It hit me one day when watching
bones. Two characters had a conversation about the features of their "awesome"
car.

I also recently saw this on "A million little things" there was an absolutely
useless shot of a main character opening the trunk of the car with a foot
wave. It was so over done and out of place.

~~~
dx87
I think I know the exact scene you're talking about in Bones, it was a super
obvious advertisement. Car starts making beeping noises "Why's the car
beeping?", "Oh, it's the new lane assist feature in my Toyota Prius. It lets
me know if I'm starting to drift across the lane because I'm distracted." Then
they get to the destination and they show off the automatic parallell parking.

~~~
throwaway66666
Everything in the new Jurassic Park movies is mercedes. Even the weird sphere-
car thing is made by mercedes. There is also a prominently featured starbucks
in the dinosaur park.

The movie is aware of how ridiculous is getting and a character says "Verizon
Wireless presents The Indominus T-Rex!!!". I guess the writers took a jab at
the producers and their deals.

\------

But the worst was in the recent Jim Jarmusch film, where Adam Driver says "You
can order it and it will arrive with free 2 day shipping". In a Jim Jarmusch
film, one of the most respected "underground" movie directors of our
generation!!! But his movie was funded by amazon studios so.. no surprises
there.

Someone should really make a "product placement in movies" hall of shame and
get internet famous.

~~~
newman8r
Not exactly a hall of shame, but you might have a good time looking through
[https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/ProductPlacement/Live...](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/ProductPlacement/LiveActionFilms)

~~~
ksdale
Those were quite entertaining to read through!

It really made me think that not all product placement is created equal.
Sometimes there are products that don't serve a purpose just sitting somewhere
really conspicuously, but something like the Snack Packs in Billy Madison
never once struck me as a product placement, they just seemed like a goofy
thing that a kid would get really worked up over, and it ended up being one of
the most quotable lines of the movie.

And that got me thinking about product placement in general, and how much
stuff on that list is just products being on screen, period. I'm sure none of
that ever happens on accident, but at least for me personally, it can
contribute to the art to have a certain brand be present (like the Wayne's
World example).

In my own life, there are brands that evoke specific feelings like road trips,
or sporting events, or drunkenness, or LAN parties, or childhood in general
and seeing a generic bag of burgers on screen doesn't have the same effect as
seeing a bag of McDonalds... I mean, it doesn't really matter and this is all
silly conjecture, but people's reactions to seeing real life brands on screen
are quite interesting!

~~~
jerf
I actually find it a bit weird to watch something nominally set in the real
world where everything is conspicuously covered up, and they get coffee from
Generic Grey Cup, their computers from NoBrand Aluminum Cases, their fizzy
sodas from Vaguely Red Can Corp., their cell phones from The Unbranded Glass
Slabs Conglomerate, etc. In real life, there are some brands around. But in
real life, nobody spontaneously rhapsodizes about how awesome their monitor
is, or at least, not very often.

~~~
SmellyGeekBoy
My monitor _is_ pretty awesome, though.

------
danielfoster
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...

~~~
nickelcitymario
Well, are we assuming they're spending those 4 hours watching TV passively?
Maybe they are. Or maybe they just like to have it on while they do other
things.

I know my own kids tend to have Netflix on all the time, but are also playing
games, making art, talking to each other, doing chores, etc.

I myself have it on for many hours a night, but I spend almost no time sitting
in front of the screen. (Sundays have been an exception for GoT.) It just
makes doing dishes, cleaning, and laundry so much more bearable.

That's what these studies always seem to fail to address. The assumption is if
the TV is on, you must be staring at it. And that's simply not the case.

~~~
danielfoster
I didn't think about this, and what you stated describes me as a child-- I had
some access to TV but preferred to do other things (namely Legos) while it was
turned on.

But I have a very active mind. My fear is that many children will actively
consume media rather than passively consume. A major part of the issue
probably depends on how parents teach their children to watch TV. This issue
needs more investigation because not all TV watching is the same. My fear is
that not all parents are as mindful as you or mine.

------
blobbers
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
Average parents?

~~~
apetresc
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.

~~~
moate
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"?

------
acd
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-h...](https://www.who.int/news-
room/detail/24-04-2019-to-grow-up-healthy-children-need-to-sit-less-and-play-
more)

------
IloveHN84
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
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.

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

~~~
gwtaylor
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
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
Sometimes having an hour of time to yourself while your kids are watching TV
is a huge boon.

------
freebear
"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!

------
onemoresoop
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?

------
3xblah
"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."

------
neovive
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.

------
jeffdavis
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.

------
luckydata
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.

~~~
nhumrich
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
Netflix permits blacklisting on kids' accounts. I've very happily used it to
suppress the especially inane stuff.

(Account > Parental controls > Restrict specific titles)

~~~
luckydata
That's a sad mockery of what parental controls should look like. First of all
the UI is buggy - lets you select the same content twice, so if you try
removing power rangers you have to remember what you picked previously. Second
it doesn't allow you to set limits by profile, I don't want to remove adult
stuff from my profile or my wife's, just my kid's.

Hard fail in my book.

------
redindian75
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 :)

------
irrational
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.

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

~~~
kikoreis
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...](https://thenextweb.com/contributors/2018/10/20/netflix-tests-ads/)

------
davidy123
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
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.

------
2T1Qka0rEiPr
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.

------
OkGoDoIt
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.

------
safgasCVS
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
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.

------
makecheck
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
> 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.

------
SpaceInvader
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
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
Huh, I'm glad I don't watch tv at all. Such a waste of time and brainwash too.

------
pcmaffey
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 :)

------
stuart78
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.

------
14
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?

------
whitlock
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.

------
hash872
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

------
fuzzbuzz
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
This has been the case for decades. These days Transformers just has more lens
flare.

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

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

------
fulafel
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.

------
2ion
Which then they spend watching 400 more hours entertainment with product
placements. Infinite jest, this is.

------
kxter
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_

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

------
xfitm3
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.

------
duxup
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
Oh my god this! Why is is so hard to balance the audio between commercials and
shows?

~~~
duxup
It's not hard, they don't want to do it, they want loud commercials to get
your attention.

------
sandwall
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.

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avivo
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.

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LearnProg17
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.

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philamonster
> 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....

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_raoulcousins
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.

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agentultra
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."

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HNLurker2
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays)

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nullwiz
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).

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

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

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

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

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thorwasdfasdf
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.

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jmpman
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.

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OrgNet
PBS Kids is pretty good for that too.

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

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throwaway55554
That's over an hour of commercials per day? WTF? That's a LOT of screen time.

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kouh
Unfortunately it also saves thousands of hours of life outdoors

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

~~~
kxter
or Kingdom Hearts, or Mortal Combat... ;)

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meiraleal
As if their content wasn't also commercials.

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QuackingJimbo
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
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-t...](https://www.livestrong.com/article/222032-how-much-tv-does-the-
average-child-watch-each-day/)

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casper345
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).

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wil421
They’ll save you from commercials but they’re not afraid of producing shows
that are lower quality than some of the “good” commercials.

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m463
except for netflix autoplay previews screwing things up.

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AnaniasAnanas
And so do torrents.

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burntoutcase
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.

~~~
awinder
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
> They learn / don't learn that skill from kidfluencers on YouTube.

Thanks for giving me a new excuse for being a misanthrope.

~~~
awinder
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-
med...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/01/business/media/social-media-
influencers-kids.html)

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

