According to Generation M2: Media in the Lives of 8- to 18-Year-Olds, a report released on January 20, 2010, by the Kaiser Family Foundation, 8- to 18-year-olds in the United States currently spend an average of 7 hours, 38 minutes using entertainment media each day. That’s over 53 hours per week — more than a full-time job! And because kids today are so adept at “media multitasking” (using more than one type of media at a time), they actually pack the equivalent of 10 hours, 45 minutes each day using into those 7.5 hours, the report notes.
Where do parents fit into these media-use equations? According to the report, “Only about three in ten young people say they have rules about how much time they can spend watching TV (28%) or playing video games (30%), and 36% say the same about using the computer.” When parents do set limits, the report continues, “children spend less time with media: those with any media rules consume nearly 3 hours less media per day (2:52) than those with no rules.”
Furthermore, family behaviors contribute heavily to children’s media consumption. “About two-thirds (64%) of young people say the TV is usually on during meals, and just under half (45%) say the TV is left on ‘most of the time’ in their home, even if no one is watching,” the report notes. “Seven in ten (71%) have a TV in their bedroom, and half (50%) have a console video game player in their room. Again, children in these TV-centric homes spend far more time watching: 1:30 more a day in homes where the TV is left on most of the time, and an hour more among those with a TV in their room.”
This recent report, the third in a series of large-scale national surveys by the Foundation looking into media use by children and adolescents, details the types of media our children are consuming, which varies greatly from the types of media children consumed just a decade ago. Today kids can be “plugged in” anytime, anyplace, with handheld electronic games and gadgets that connect them to the Internet at the touch of a fingertip. While the long- and short-term effects of such heavy media use are still up for debate, the fact that parents play a significant role in moderating their children’s media consumption is clear.
For more information, read the Foundation’s full press release here, or download the report in its entirety (as well as the two previous reports from 1999 and 2004) here.
February 1st, 2010 | Category: Health and Wellness
When deciding whether to hire a nanny : to care for their children, American families now have a new statistic to consider: how much time their children spend plugged into media. Children with a nanny are less plugged into computers, iPods and video games than the national average. A recent study by the Kaiser Family Foundation reports average use of media by children ages 8-18 is about 7.5 hours a day. Nannies4hire.com subsequently conducted a study with nannies and babysitters registered with the online database service. In a survey of 1,000 caregivers, children ages 8-18 are only spending 1.6 hours a day on computers, watching TV, listening to music on iPods or mp3 players, and playing video games. Thus, children with nannies spend almost 6 hours less on a daily basis being glued to a computer, television, or gaming screen or otherwise engaged in solitary, sedentary techno-activity.
http://blog.nannies4hire.com/nannies-benefit-kids%e2%80%99-activity-level/334