Killian Mullan's book offers a comprehensive analysis of how children living in the UK spend their time, using data from representative time-use surveys collected in 1975, 2000 and 2015.

The novelty is that the book covers different years, providing details on the different activities children are involved in during their day — and how this affects their well-being — while discussing the evolution over time. It tackles a topic of broad interest that was little studied in sociology or economics. The book fills this gap, offering evidence on children's daily lives over the past four decades.

The introductory chapter offers interesting points of reflection on the importance of investigating such a topic, bringing together contributions from various disciplines such as economics and sociology. It also traces out some of the major strands of social change that could have had an impact on the different aspects of children's daily use of time, focusing on social, economic and technological changes. Finally, the chapter discusses outcomes that may be affected by how children spend their time and provides some valuable thoughts on how different disciplines perceive ‘childhood’, bringing to the forefront the fact that children's use of time is fundamental to both their future development (economics and sociology points of view) and their present life, as children are already complete human beings (childhood sociology approach).

Four central chapters form the core of the book, and each captures a different sphere of activity in which children spend their time: time for education and culture (Chapter 2), time for health (Chapter 3), time for family (Chapter 4) and time for technology (Chapter 5). The activities analysed in Chapter 2 include not only homework and reading but also cultural activities, while time for health — both mental and physical — includes sports and screen time. Time for family, instead, is not about what children do but about the context or location in which they spend their days, focusing on the hours spent at home. Finally, technology includes children's access to tablets, smartphones and mobile phones, and the internet at home and investigates the highly debated topic of how the proliferation of these new screen-based technologies is influencing children's lives.

In a very systematic way, each of these chapters reports the average time spent by children in various activities over the period of time considered. All of the statistics are divided by age group (young children, those aged 8–11, and older children aged 12–16), by gender and by level of education of the parents, all presented both for school and non-school days. Interesting comparisons are offered in all chapters: How has time spent in a specific activity changed between 1975 and 2015? Are there differences by age or gender? What is the role of parental socioeconomic background in explaining the allocation of children's time over the various time periods considered? How does the way parents spend their own time influence the way children spend their time? How are the various activities related to each other?

The final chapter is dedicated to how children feel about how they spend their time and thus focuses on children's subjective well-being, analysing the connection between time use and children's happiness. As one could expect, children explicitly declare that they enjoy their leisure time and screen time much more than the time devoted to homework or study and that, in general, they feel happier when doing activities with others (parents or friends) rather than alone. These results lead to some interesting policy implications outlined by the author, such as the potential for children's engagement in homework to be a bit more enjoyable, for example, by sharing this time with family or peers.

Overall, the book offers a lot of new evidence that was not previously documented in such detail. It offers a great starting point for readers interested in a detailed overview of how children are spending their time, on how this has changed over the recent decades and how this is affecting children's well-being.

Killian Mullan 的书使用 1975、2000 和 2015 年收集的代表性时间使用调查数据，全面分析了生活在英国的儿童如何度过他们的时间。

新颖之处在于，这本书涵盖了不同的年份，详细介绍了儿童在一天中参与的不同活动——以及这如何影响他们的幸福感——同时讨论了随着时间的推移的演变。它解决了一个在社会学或经济学中鲜有研究的广泛关注的话题。这本书填补了这一空白，提供了过去四年中儿童日常生活的证据。

介绍性章节提供了有关调查此类主题重要性的有趣思考点，汇集了经济学和社会学等各个学科的贡献。它还追溯了一些可能对儿童日常使用时间的不同方面产生影响的社会变革的主要方面，重点关注社会、经济和技术变革。最后，本章讨论了可能受儿童如何度过时间影响的结果，并就不同学科如何看待“童年”提供了一些有价值的想法，突出了儿童对时间的利用对其未来发展（经济学）的基础这一事实。和社会学的观点）和他们现在的生活，因为儿童已经是完整的人（儿童社会学方法）。

四个核心章节构成了本书的核心，每个章节都涵盖了儿童花费时间的不同活动领域：教育和文化时间（第 2 章）、健康时间（第 3 章）、家庭时间（第 4 章）和技术时间（第 5 章）。第 2 章分析的活动不仅包括家庭作业和阅读，还包括文化活动，而健康时间——包括精神和身体——包括运动和屏幕时间。相反，家庭时间不在于孩子们做什么，而在于他们度过一天的环境或地点，专注于在家度过的时间。最后，技术包括儿童使用平板电脑、智能手机和手机，

这些章节中的每一章都以非常系统的方式报告了在所考虑的时间段内儿童在各种活动中花费的平均时间。所有统计数据均按年龄组（幼儿、8-11 岁和 12-16 岁的大儿童）、性别和父母的教育水平进行划分，所有数据均针对上学日和非上学日进行。所有章节都提供了有趣的比较：在 1975 年和 2015 年之间，在特定活动中花费的时间有何变化？是否存在年龄或性别差异？父母的社会经济背景在解释所考虑的不同时间段内儿童时间分配方面的作用是什么？父母打发时间的方式如何影响孩子打发时间的方式？各种活动之间的关系如何？

最后一章致力于儿童如何看待他们如何度过他们的时间，从而关注儿童的主观幸福感，分析时间使用与儿童幸福之间的联系。正如人们所预料的那样，孩子们明确表示，他们享受闲暇时间和看屏幕的时间比花在家庭作业或学习上的时间要多得多，而且总的来说，与他人（父母或朋友）一起活动时，他们会感到更快乐，而不是独自一人。这些结果导致了作者概述的一些有趣的政策含义，例如孩子们可能会更愉快地参与家庭作业，例如，通过与家人或同龄人分享这段时间。

总的来说，这本书提供了许多以前没有如此详细记录的新证据。它为有兴趣详细了解儿童如何度过他们的时间、近几十年来这种情况如何发生变化以及这如何影响儿童福祉的读者提供了一个很好的起点。