Last week, Common Sense Media published the results of a new survey about young children and how much screen time they’re getting these days. In short, they’re getting a lot of it.
Chalk it up to the proliferation of screens of all kinds. Once upon a time, the only flickering pixels attracting eyeballs were television sets. But with the explosion of mobile, app-happy smart phones and tablet computers, children today are growing up in world where they’re never far removed from some sort of screen—and the all the content that goes with it.
The study was titled Zero to Eight: Children’s Media Use in America, and it contained lots of interesting statistics for those who (like me) find such factoids compelling. One that really got my attention was how many really young kids are utilizing these high-tech screens these days. Researchers found that 53% of 2- to 4-year olds have already used a computer, for instance.
But perhaps the most compelling component of the story to me wasn’t a stat at all. Rather, it was a quote from Common Sense Media CEO James Steyer. And it contains a healthy dose of, ahem, common sense:
Parents increasingly are handing their iPhones to their 1 ½-year-old kid as a shut-up toy. And parents who check their email three times on the way to the bus stop are constantly modeling that behavior, so it's only natural the kids want to use mobile devices too.
We often talk here at Plugged In about the influence of the media, the culture and children’s peers on their values. And all of those factors do exert real influence. But Steyer’s common-sense loaded quote is worth pondering because it articulates a simple, profound truth: Kids do what they see their parents doing.
If we’re constantly looking at our gadgets, checking email, surfing the Web while watching TV, etc., our children are going to do exactly the same thing. It’s ridiculous to think we can raise children with good media habits and boundaries if we don’t have them ourselves, and yet I suspect many of us operate with a sort of unspoken digital version of “Do as I say, not as I do.”
And I say that as someone whose laptop is more often than not open and connected to the Internet on the dining room table … just in case I need to check my email, of course.
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