If you surf any given news site on any given day, you’re likely to find some university or scientist that’s published the latest research on this, that or the other.
Not all of them are pertinent to what we do here at Plugged In, and not all of them are good. But The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation’s recent study on how much youth use media was one of the most significant I’ve seen in a long time.
The exhaustive study, titled “Generation M²: Media in the Lives of 8- to 18-Year-Olds,” is the second such study that Kaiser has commissioned. Back in 2005, Kaiser’s researchers found that the average person in this age range consumed 6 hours and 21 minutes of media a day. And when they added in multitasking—watching TV while surfing the Net, for example—that figure rose to 8 hours and 33 minutes. That’s a lot of time.
So where are things five years later? The introduction to Kaiser’s findings puts it this way: “[In 2005], it seemed that young people’s lives were filled to the bursting point with media. Today, however, those levels of use have been shattered.”
Specifically, the average 8- to 18-year-old now spends 7 hours and 38 minutes a day engaged in media (defined as TV, music, computer/Internet usage, video games, books/magazines/newspapers and movies). Add in multitasking, and the figure rises to a whopping 10 hours and 45 minutes.
How much time per week is that, you ask? Try about 77 hours and 15 minutes. Remarkably, that number does not include talking on cell phones or texting. But Kaiser tabulated those numbers, too, so add another 33 minutes for daily cell phone conversations and another 1 hour and 35 minutes for texting. Where does that put our cumulative media-use total? Would you believe about 90 hours a week?!
Any way you slice it, kids’ exposure to media today is incredibly high, and it’s only getting higher as mobile and wireless technology increasingly make it possible to watch or listen to anything, anywhere. And though Kaiser’s study focuses on youth, other research suggests that media-usage trends among adults are on the uptick as well.
So how much time would you say you spend engaged with these media? How about your kids (if you have them)? On the flip side, what strategies do you employ to discipline your own usage or limit your family’s exposure? We’d love to hear from you.
Recent Comments