Bonnie Ribune of the Chicago Tribune writes:
The amount of time young people spend consuming media has ballooned with around-the-clock access and mobile devices that function practically as appendages, according to a new report.
A few years ago, the same researchers thought that teens and tweens were consuming about as much media as humanly possible in the hours available. But somehow, young people have found a way to pack in even more.
In the last five years, the time that America's 8- to 18-year-olds spend watching TV, playing video games and using a computer for entertainment has risen by 1 hour, 17 minutes a day, the Kaiser Family Foundation said.
Young people now devote an average of 7 hours, 38 minutes to daily media use, or about 53 hours a week — more than a full-time job.
"What surprised me the most is the sheer amount of media content coming into their lives each day," said Kaiser's Vicky Rideout, who directed the study. "When you step back and look at the big picture, it's a little overwhelming."
The numbers zoom even higher if you consider kids' multitasking — such as listening to music while on the computer. Those data show young people are marinating in media for what amounts to 10 hours, 45 minutes a day — an increase of almost 2.25 hours since 2004.
The report, "Generation M2: Media in the Lives of 8- to 18-year-olds," is based on a survey of more than 2,000 students nationwide. It is the third wave of the nonprofit's ongoing look at children's media use, providing a glimpse at current viewing and listening patterns while also documenting changes from five and 10 years ago.
The huge increase since 2004 can be attributed to the transformation of the cell phone into a content delivery device, Rideout said.
"Kids are spending more time using their phone to play video games, watch TV and listen to music than to actually talk on them," she said.
And, of course, the last time Kaiser took the nation's temperature, social networking sites barely existed.
"The average day for me, if I am not at work, I will text all day or be on MySapce or Facebook," said Felinda Seymore, 17, of Waukegan. "That's my life."
On Sunday, for instance, she fiddled around online from 9 p.m. to 2 a.m., updating her status and commenting on her friends' pages, she said.
Yikes--O how important it is for us to saturate our minds with God's Word!
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