Techies of Tomorrow Start Young: Electronics See Early Adoption

The average age at which children begin using consumer electronic (CE) devices has declined from 8.1 years in 2005 to 6.7 years in 2007, according to NPD Group's recently released report, "Kids and Consumer Electronics Trends III," writes MarketingCharts.The report studies the penetration of consumer electronics in kids' lives and measures device-usage dynamics and trends. Children begin using electronic devices at approximately 7 years of age on average, with televisions and desktop computers providing the youngest initial exposure (about 4 or 5 years of age), and satellite radios and portable digital media players (PDMP) providing the oldest (about 9 years of age), NPD Group said. Some other findings from the study: Since 2005, nearly all of the various electronic devices have registered a decline in average age at the time of initial use. Kids use electronic devices an average of three days per week, with non-portable televisions (5.8 days), cell phones (4.3 days) and digital video recorders (4.1 days) registering the highest use. The average number of consumer-electronics devices owned and used by kids is down slightly compared with the previous two years, as are the number of households that own those devices. Nearly 25 percent of households surveyed claimed to have made no electronics purchases in the previous 12 months. MarketingCharts provides additional data.