A new study finds that the average American between the ages of eight and eighteen spends more than seven and a half hours a day using a iPhone or Blackberry, watching television, playing video games or using a computer. And that’s not counting the hour and a half they spend texting OR the half hour they spend talking on their cell phones. And our mother’s thought that OUR heads were the ones that were going to end up square from watching all that TV.
The study’s authors thought that kids had hit the highest number of screen hours that was possible five years ago when they were averaging six and a half hours a day. They were wrong. Because kids often multi-task their screen time, many of them manage to be using more than one screen at once. That means that the average should probably be more like 11 hours a day.
Blame the iPhone. Now that a large portion of average kids basically have the Internet at their finger tips at all times, in all places, it’s no shock that they’re used to a steady stream. On average kids spend two hours a day on a smart phone. They consume more media, including formerly “old” media like TV via things like Hulu, on their phones than they talk on them, despite the fact that now a lot of smart phones allow users to watch YouTube or text while talking.
It’s clear that this multi-tasking media obsession isn’t great for kids. It has clear negative influences of grades, behavior, sleep and stress. But, if it’s this ubiquitous, is it even worth debating whether it’s a good or a bad thing? The horse is out of the barn. The barn is on fire. Time to find ways to deal with the reality of our kids media consumption habits.
The good news? Screen time doesn’t seem to affect exercise rates (at least according to this study, others link it with obesity). And most study participants got good grades – it was only the heaviest users (sixteen hours or more) that really suffered. The bad news is that kids with heavy media were much more likely to report that they were bored, sad or depressed.
So what can you do? It’s hard enough to keep tabs on a teen, a teen with 24/7 access to the world via the Web is nearly impossible to supervise. Limiting media use during meals and in bedrooms (7 out of 10 teens have a TV in their bedrooms) is a start. Lightest media users live in homes where their viewing time is restricted. Kids with specific screen time limits did even better at controlling their viewing.
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