The Nielsen Company says children's viewing of TV is at an eight-year high.

Young kids 2-5 spend 32 hours in front of their TVs, while kids 6-11 watch a little less, at over 28 hours. Nielsen says the lower numbers for older kids are the result of more time spent at school.

The biggest use of TV time -- 78% -- comes with live TV viewing, which among kids 2-5 is 24 hours, or 51 minutes per week. This comes after time playing DVDs at 4 hours, 33 minutes; then DVR playback, 1:29; game console, 1:12; and videotape playback at 45 minutes.

But older kids are different than young kids, with DVD and game console use about equal: 2:28 for DVD and 2:23 for game console. DVR playback is less than half the time for these two activities at just 59 minutes. Videotape playback is at 18 minutes per week among this segment.

Nielsen says this trend mirrors overall media consumption in the two years. TV viewing is higher, and so are Internet, gaming and mobile phone activities.

One of the more surprising pieces of research from Nielsen shows that in DVR households, younger kids are watching far more commercials than older kids -- more than every other TV demographic group.

In DVR households, Nielsen says kids 2-5 see 50% of commercials in DVR playback during prime time. The data comes from prime-time averages among the four broadcast networks during the May sweep period.

Kids 6-11 see 44% in playback; teens 12-17, 43%; adults 18-34, 44%; adults 35-54, 43%; and adults 55 plus, 44%.

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