Two-thirds of young children in the US now have access to an e-reader or tablet, but only half of them actually use the device to read, a research institute said in a study published on Friday.
The Joan Ganz Cooney Centre in New York surveyed 1577 parents on how much time their two-year-old to 10-year-old children spent with educational content on "screen media", such as televisions, computers and video games.
Sixty-two per cent of children had access to either an e-reader, a tablet or both - but only 49 per cent of them used the devices for reading, either alone or with their parents, the study found.
When they did read, it was typically for about five minutes a day - compared with about half an hour with printed books.
Parents considered 44 per cent of the screen media used by their children to be educational - representing 56 minutes out of two hours and seven minutes' viewing a day.
Fifty-seven per cent thought their child had learnt "a lot" from educational media about reading and mathematics, but only 19 per cent thought that much had been learnt about science.
Named for one of the founders of the Children's Television Workshop, the studio behind Sesame Street, the Joan Ganz Cooney Centre promotes literacy skills while researching digital learning for youngsters.
The study can be found at joanganzcooneycenter.org.
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