Fun City Children's Play Index announced for 2013

~Also launches “Fun City Play Index Calculator” for parents to evaluate their child's play index on www.funcity.ae for an accurate understanding of their play behaviour ~
~The index for 2013 has been expanded to the geographies of Qatar, Bahrain and Oman in addition to UAE
~At a combined Index Score of 25, children show a reasonable level of play activities in their daily routine; albeit with a strong dependence towards passive and indoor play~

13th November, Dubai, UAE: Fun City, the largest family entertainment centre in the region announced the second Fun City Children's Play Index 2013 at a press event in Dubai at the Jumeirah Creek side Hotel. With a combined Index score of 25 for four countries, children from these countries appear to have a good balance between play and other activities during their daily routine spending 25% of their total free time in play related activities.

An exciting innovation and addition to this year's play index is the launch of Fun City Play Index Calculator which allows every parent in the region to compute their child's play index on www.funcity.ae. Parents have to fill in details of their child's activities on a regular day from the time they wake up till they go off to bed. The tool will then show results along with interpretations and suggestions from Fun City's Parenting Expert, Aamnah Husain.

Fun City Children's Play Index for 2013 sheds light on the amount of time children between the ages of 2-12 years spend on play as well as insights pertaining to their playing patterns. The index defines the share of playing time among other daily activities excluding the time children spend at school. It is a calculation of their ‘free time' that is dedicated to play. The research aims to raise awareness for the need of a well-balanced developmental approach for children with a combination of indoor and outdoor play activities.

Fun City Children's Play Index is based on a survey conducted in Sep 2013 among 1000 family respondents from different nationalities with children in the age group of 2-12 years residing in UAE, Oman, Bahrain and Qatar. The Index assesses fundamental play activities in a child's regular day such as the total amount of their days' free time spent in playing activities, the split of indoor vs. outdoor play, active vs. passive play, popular playing activities, and exposure to technology.

“Fun City's Children Play Index is our effort to bring widespread awareness for a well-balanced growth and development of children in the region through a fair split of time spent between academic and play related activities during the day. This is the second year of this study and we have expanded its scope in an endeavor to touch many more lives with our initiative.

Furthermore, the innovative and first ever Fun City Play Index Calculator is a new addition this year which has been launched to empower parents to evaluate their child's play behaviour. This scientific understanding of the positives and the negatives of their child's play will aid them to bring about important changes in their child's play habits”, said Silvio Liedtke, Chief Operating Officer, Landmark Leisure.

Commenting on the research findings, Aamnah Husain, Qualified Psychologist and Parenting Consultant to Fun City stated, “In its second consecutive year, Fun City Children's Play Index provides valuable information and insight into children's use of time and in particular their play habits. The results of this annual assessment can benefit parents, educators, policy makers, healthcare officials and anyone interested in the wellbeing of our children, as it describes the current involvement of children in the region with different activities and provides some healthy guidelines.

It postulates an opportunity for you to assess your own child's play habits, note imbalances and intervene in a way that supports the full social, emotional, physical and cognitive development of your child. ”.

Some of the key research findings are:

1. The individual Play index scores for each country is as below
   a. UAE : 21 (It has stayed consistent from last year)
   b. Qatar : 33
   c. Oman: 21
   d. Bahrain: 26
   The above implies that the play related activities are the highest among children residing in Qatar followed by Bahrain compared to UAE and Oman.
2. A child's conventional toys box comprises of an average of 7 toys. In addition to this, every child has 4.3 digital devices in their toy box. (Tablet, Laptop, PSP, PC, PlayStation, Xbox, Ninentdo or Wii). Nine out of ten children have at least one of these personal gaming devices. The Tablet is the most popular personal gaming device for the child.
   As a result, almost 21% of a child's time is spent indoors at home on a personal gaming device and/or television.
3. Close to 40% of the children prefer spending time on games played on personal devices. This preference is highest in Qatar at 50% and the lowest in Oman at 29%. In the age group of 9-12 years, this preference increases to 50%. This also infers the dependence on these games by 70% parents in an endeavor to keep their children entertained. 30% of parents are not aware of the games played by their children on these devices.
4. The incidence of playing games on personal digital devices is as high at 9.1% among children in the age group of 9-12 years whereas the creative play activities reduces to 1.9% amongst the children from the same ages.
5. Only 7% of a child's time is spent on outdoor play. The preference towards Sports is also quite low among children in these countries averaging at 11% for the four countries. Out of this time, children allocate only about 4.3% of their day's free time playing sports related activities and a mere 2.6% time is spent on creative activities like art, music, dance, etc.
6. In terms of Parental engagement with the child, the incidence of fathers playing with their child is 7% whereas the mother tends to spend almost 27% of her time thereby maintaining the main role in her child's development. The ratio of both parents spending time with their child stands at 15%. Lastly, 40% of the mothers also believe that father is involved in their child growth at all stages.
7. Children spend almost 21% of their time playing alone on an average.

Some behavioral insights of the study are:

• The average time spent playing by children stands at an Index score of 25 in all four countries combined together.
• 4 out of 5 children from 6-12 years of age wake up before or at 6.00am on a weekday
• In UAE, children spend more time at school
• On an average, children are awake for 13.5 hours on weekdays and 10.5 hours in weekends.
• Play activities increase during the weekends when children have more time on hand due to the absence of a routine based schedule
• The younger age groups spend relatively more time playing as compared to the older children The older the child grows, he/she has lesser time on hand for play activities
• Asian children spend less time playing compared to Local Arabs, Expats and Western children
• Boys spend more time playing compared to girls

Methodology
Fun City engaged TNS Research Agency to interview a total of 1000 parents across all nationalities including Emiratis, Qataris, Bahrainis, Omanis, Expat Arabs, Asians & Westerners residing in UAE, Bahrain, Oman and Qatar to understand the playing patterns of children in these countries to compile Fun City Children's Play Index for 2013.

Respondents were asked to provide answers to a questionnaire comprising of more than 20 questions in a detailed face to face interview set in order to understand their child/children's daily life and the time divide between scholastic and recreational activities.
The computation of the index has been improved this year by measuring the actual time spent on each activity, thereby making the index even more accurate. This year the Index scale has been reduced to 100 from 200 making it easier to comprehend. The index defines the share of playing time among other daily activities, excluding the time children spend at school. The responses depict the actual lifestyle of the respondents' children and how much of their ‘free time' is dedicated to play. This was then indexed for each individual to get an overall score.

The 1000 respondents were mothers of children between 2-12 years of age and were residents of UAE, Oman, Bahrain and Qatar. The sample consisted of 35% of children in the age group of 2-5years, 35% in the age group of 6-8 years and 30% in the age group of 9-12years.

This is the first Index of its kind that has been instituted by Fun City. The first edition of this index that was launched for UAE in 2012 received an overwhelming response from parents, child psychologists and the general public. Fun City has therefore expanded the scope of this research to Oman, Bahrain and Qatar in addition to UAE this year with the aim of generating more comparative information and a better analysis of the playing patterns of children in the region.
Fun City Children's Play Index was instituted in 2012 in line with Universal Children's Day celebrated by United Nations on 20th November and the index is announced annually around this event.

About Landmark Leisure: Landmark Leisure is the entertainment division of the iconic Landmark Group and was founded in 1999 with its flagship brand, Fun City. Since then, it has been the best recognized family entertainment brand across the UAE, Oman, Qatar, Bahrain and India catering to children from 1-12 years old, and encouraging them to learn whilst they play, with a variety of activities focused on children's growth and development.
Landmark Leisure has mapped growth plans for next two years and will see a series of new centre launches for Fun Ville, Fun City including the launch of a unique entertainment concept Fun Works that will expand Landmark Leisure's realm of family entertainment offerings.