PCMag editors select and review products independently. If you buy through affiliate links, we may earn commissions, which help support our testing.

PCMag UK

COVID-19 Leads to Upsurge in Kids' Streaming Screen-Time

In the US in March, comparing before the coronavirus onset to after social distancing and lockdown happened shows a 70 percent increase in kid-content streaming and business-hours viewing.

Eric Griffith
 & Eric Griffith Senior Editor, Features

Our team tests, rates, and reviews more than 1,500 products each year to help you make better buying decisions and get more from technology.

Our Expert
LOOK INSIDE PC LABS HOW WE TEST
65 EXPERTS
43 YEARS
41,500+ REVIEWS

There's little question that certain business models are benefiting from the social-distancing (or outright quarantine) lifestyle we've adopted as COVID-19 continues its onslaught. Streaming video probably tops that list.

To underscore how things are changing, Reelgood.com—which has had a 49 precent jump in signups by people using it to find new things to stream—sent us its latest deep dive into its own data regarding streaming times and how they've changed with coronavirus. In particular how the presence of so many kids at home full-time has had a major impact.

The big reveal is above. Looking back over the first three months of the year, the daily share of total streams for kids shows and movies stayed pretty steady... until about March 9. By March 16, there was a 70 percent jump, where the amount kids were watching more than doubled.

Below you can see the same thing for the month of March alone, with relative steadiness and highs on the weekend (March 7 and 8) when kids are home, and all of that blown out of the water since around March 16. By March 22, the last day for the data provided, kids' streams accounted for a full 9.66 percent of daily playback.


DAILY SHARE OF PLAYBACK INCLUDING WEEKENDS MARCH 2020 ONLY

Even if you take out the inflated weekend numbers, the increase for weekday-only kids' streams is also up 70 percent.

Reelgood included a heat-map showing the monthly hotspots for viewing, with January, February, and March 2020 all highlighted. Obviously, you still can't beat prime-time for the most viewing, but check out the subtle shift during business hours, as more viewing takes place between the hours of 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. It's just a 4 percent increase but a telling one, since it's unlikely the kids are watching  between midnight and 7a.m.


HEATMAP OF MONTHLY VIEWING PER HOUR BIZ HOURS VS OFF HOURS.

Boiling it down to percentages, business-hour viewing has gone from 43.21 percent of the time in January to 46.78 percent of the time in March.

Reelgood also provided its list of the most-watched kids' content from March 16 to March 22, 2020.

Most Watched Kids' TV Shows:

Related

5. "Pokemon" 
4. "Dragon Ball" 
3. "Mighty Med" 
2. "Samurai Jack" 
1. "Ben 10 Reboot"

Most Watched Kids' Movies:

5. Incredibles 2
4. Up
3. The Lion King (animated version)
2. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
1. Frozen II

Further Reading

Video Streaming Service Reviews

Video Streaming Service Best Picks

About Our Expert

Eric Griffith

Eric Griffith

Senior Editor, Features

My Experience

I've been writing about computers, the internet, and technology professionally since 1992, more than half of that time with PCMag. I arrived at the end of the print era of PC Magazine as a senior writer. I served for a time as managing editor of business coverage before settling back into the features team for the last decade and a half. I write features on all tech topics, plus I handle several special projects, including the Readers' Choice and Business Choice surveys and yearly coverage of the Best ISPs and Best Gaming ISPs, Best Products of the Year, and Best Brands (plus the Best Brands for Tech Support, Longevity, and Reliability).

I started in tech publishing right out of college, writing and editing stories about hardware and development tools. I migrated to software and hardware coverage for families, and I spent several years exclusively writing about the then-burgeoning technology called Wi-Fi. I was on the founding staff of several magazines, including Windows Sources, FamilyPC, and Access Internet Magazine. All of which are now defunct, and it's not my fault. I have freelanced for publications as diverse as Sony Style, Playboy.com, and Flux. I got my degree at Ithaca College in, of all things, television/radio. But I minored in writing so I'd have a future.

In my long-lost free time, I wrote some novels, a couple of which are not just on my hard drive: BETA TEST ("an unusually lighthearted apocalyptic tale," according to Publishers' Weekly) and a YA book called KALI: THE GHOSTING OF SEPULCHER BAY. Go get them on Kindle.

I work from my home in Ithaca, NY, and did it long before pandemics made it cool.

The Technology I Use

My first computer was a Laser 128, an Apple II-compatible clone with an integrated keyboard, matched with an eye-straining monochrome green monitor. I used it to type papers in college for other people for money...until I discovered the Mac SE in the college computer room. That changed my life. My first cellphone was a Samsung Uproar—the silver one with the built-in MP3 player from the Napster days (the pre-iPod era).

I use an iPhone 15 Pro hourly and an iPad Air infrequently (but I'm always in the market for a cheap Android tablet). I have a PlayStation 5 just to play Spider-Man, and several Windows machines, including a work-issued Lenovo ThinkPad. I talk to Alexa and Siri all day long. I do the majority of my computing on a 15-inch LG Gram laptop attached to a Thunderbolt hub to run a multi-monitor setup—I overdid it on the power needed to simply work from home.

I'm most at home in Microsoft Word after decades of writing there. More and more, I turn to services like Google Docs, using tools like Grammarly. I use Google's Chrome browser due to an addiction to several extensions I think I can't live without, but probably could. I use Excel extensively on data-intensive stories, but for chart creation, we've switched over entirely to using Infogram for interactive features that are hard to find elsewhere. I do a lot of graphics work for my stories, but limit myself to the free and amazing Paint.NET software to edit images.

I'm a firm evangelist for using the cloud for backup and syncing of files; I'm primarily using Dropbox, which has never failed me, but I also have redundant setups on Microsoft OneDrive, plus extra picture backups on Amazon Photos and iCloud. Why take chances? For entertainment, mine is a streaming-only household—my kid has never seen network TV and barely been exposed to commercials, thanks to Roku and Amazon Music. The house is peppered with smart speakers from Amazon for instant gratification and control of smart home devices like multiple Wyze cameras and Nest Protect smoke detectors. I've got accounts on all the major social networks, to my horror. I have a robot vacuum for each floor of the house. I want a 3D printer, but not sure what I'd use it for.

Read the latest from Eric Griffith

Read full bio