Yesterday’s NY Times featured a great article about kids and electronic media consumption – If Your Kids Are Awake They’re Probably Online. The researchers were amazed at the increase they found, thinking that we’d already reached a saturation point. Turns out kids are multi-media tasking at an astronomical rate, with smart phones, computers and more.
“Those ages 8 to 18 spend more than seven and a half hours a day with such devices, compared with less than six and a half hours five years ago, when the study was last conducted. And that does not count the hour and a half that youths spend texting, or the half-hour they talk on their cellphones.
And because so many of them are multitasking — say, surfing the Internet while listening to music — they pack on average nearly 11 hours of media content into that seven and a half hours.”
That is more time than they spend in school! In the comment section after the article, many teachers wrote in and reported rampant texting during class time. So even when kids are in school, they are often still plugged-in.
One mom’s story in particular hit home for me:
In Kensington, Md., Kim Calinan let her baby son, Trey, watch Baby Einstein videos, and soon moved him on to “Dora the Explorer.”
“By the time he was 4, he had all these math and science DVDs, and he was clicking through by himself, and he learned to read and do math early,” she said. “So if we’d had the conversation then, I would have said they were great educational tools.”
But now that Trey is 9 and wild about video games, Ms. Calinan feels differently.
Last year, she sensed that video games were displacing other interests and narrowing his social interactions. After realizing that Trey did not want to sign up for any after-school activities that might cut into his game time, Ms. Calinan limited his screen time to an hour and half a day on weekends only.
So last Wednesday, Trey came home and read a book — but said he was looking forward to the weekend, when he could play his favorite video game.
As parents, we sometimes do not see the full ramifications of our decisions until it is too late. (I recently wrote about my regrets in letting my sons watch Star Wars.) But the times when we can see the writing on the wall, and make decisions now that will help our children later, are powerful. Setting media limits when kids are young makes it easier to keep things somewhat under control down the road.
We don’t have television at our house, but we do watch DVDs. I am strict about not watching DVDs on a school night. One of my sons occasionally complains about this rule, but we stick with it. I know that as they get older, and have more homework and after-school activities, the ground rules about DVDs will have already been set. However, as Kim Calinan reports, parents can make changes mid-stream, especially if they have conversations with their children about their concerns.
I highly recommend the NY Times article – and the wide range of comments posted. It is a good snapshot of where were are today, and how as individuals with a variety of viewpoints, we view our current electronic media-filled world.
