Kids spending 63% more time online than five years ago

Adding a contradictory point to the previous post about Wednesday Comics, here’s a tidbit to consider: US kids aged 2-11 are spending +63% more time online over the last five years, according to a new Nielsen report, from about 7 hours in May 2004 to 11+ hours online in May 2009.

In May 2009, kids 2-11 comprised 16 million, or 9.5% of the online universe (a fairly split evenly between boys and girls).  This is an increase over 2004, with the number of K2-11 online growing +18%. K2-11 are also outpacing the increase for the overall population, which was up by 36% over the last five years. Boys are spending 7% more time online than girls, but girls are taking in more content, viewing 9% more web pages than boys in May 2009. Meanwhile, in May 2009, boys led in viewing and time spent, consuming 61% of video streams among kids and comprising 57% of the time spent viewing videos.

So with this new growth, combined with the collapse of the newsstand market, if you want to reach that new, upcoming audience and hook them on reading comics, where should you be…?

(Hat tip: Cynopsis. And a virtual nickel to the first person who can identify the picture.)