Good Media
NEW BEGINNINGS: OUR MEDIA USAGE
Andrea Rock, contributing editor
Well, it’s that time of year that we all both welcome and dread, isn’t it? Time to make New Year’s resolutions that we have some chance of keeping! The first thought that always comes to my mind is of my health, weight and fitness, and I imagine that such a thought is rather common for many of us! But this year, why not consider our families’ use of media, in order to assess whether the amount of usage is healthy?
In an exhaustive study of over 2000 children and adolescents, the Kaiser Family Foundation has published “Generation M2: Media In the Lives of 8- to 10-Year-Olds,” to alert parents, doctors, policy makers and child advocates about our kids’ use of media. The study explores not only the amount of time they spend cumulatively with media, but also breaks down the amount of time they spend with each form of media, how the new media platforms have changed their media usage, what types of media are available to them in their homes and their bedrooms, whether there are differences in usage by boys and girls and among different ethnic groups, how media usage has changed over the years, and much, much more. And the findings are striking! Consider:
- On average, American youth spend 7 hours, 38 minutes per day consuming media — 7 days per week!
- More importantly, because of “multi-tasking,” using more than one medium at a time, they actually take in the equivalent of 10 hours and 45 minutes of media within those 7-and-a-half-hours.
- Despite the rise of social media, the majority of time is spent watching TV, followed by music, computer, video games, print media and movies.
This study, as most that preceded it, confirmed that young people who spend more time with media earn lower grades and report lower levels of personal happiness. What is significant in the findings is the disparity of usage among certain age groups and by race. Kids who fall in the 11-14-year-old age group averaged almost 9 hours per day; the multi-tasking consideration pushed that number to nearly 12 hours of media consumption per day! And usage is substantially higher among black and Hispanic youth, even when controlling for demographic factors such as age, parent education, and whether the child is from a single or two-parent family.
In light of this information, it is not surprising that the reading of hard-copy materials such as books, magazines and newspapers is down among all age groups, is down from 43 minutes per day ten years ago, to 38 minutes per day today. This is a sobering number for all of us to contemplate, and could guide us in making new beginnings in our families’ use of media. Because each family’s media usage is different, I will not make specific time recommendations. But I heartily make the following recommendations:
- Take a serious inventory of your children’s media usage, and resolve that, whatever the number, you start by decreasing media usage by 20%. Many of you will want to continue decreasing usage, as your children adjust
- Take a serious inventory of your own media usage, and the odds are, you may want to do the same, to be a good role model!
- If you have not allowed your kids to have a TV in their bedrooms, stay with that plan!
- KNOW what they are consuming, as much as possible! Find out which TV programs they watch, and make sure you approve! HEAR the lyrics of the music they consume, and make sure you approve! TRACK the Websites they visit! SET RULES AND GUIDELINES
The United States currently ranks 35th of all industrialized nations on math and reading scores. This is unacceptable. Certainly there are changes that need to be made in our schools, but we have most control over what happens in our own homes. The distraction of media seems like the most logical place to start!
To read the study in its pdf entirety, go to: http://www.kff.org/entmedia/8010.cfm and click on Full Report.
And have a Happy, New Year!
