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The 53 hours a week teens spend on media use is way too much of a good thing.
Filed Under "At-risk" students, Computers In The Classroom, Digital toys, The way I see it, underachieving students | 14 Comments
“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.” Whoa!!!! according to the report, “Generation M2: Media in the Lives of 8- to 18-year-olds,” which is based on a survey of more than 2,000 students nationwide.
No wonder some of my student seem dead tired in school. School itself is a full time job. Now that kids are spending more time with media these days than time on school, it’s a wonder students have time to do any homework at all. I guess should be impressed with the marks they do get! Research determined that marks for heavy media users are lower than marks for light media users. although, more research needs to be done to determine if there is a definite cause and effect.
Years ago I remember reading that when kids spend 24 hours a week on a part time job their grades go down significantly because it’s too much for kids to manage. Fifry three hours a week on media must be way, way too much. When do kids sleep? No wonder some of my students aren’t coping. I don’t think I could do my job very well if I spent 53 hours on media either. I tell my students school is their job, and they shouldn’t let anything interfere with their job.
Kids spend most of their time on their cell phones checking out Facebook,MySpace, texting, playing video games, watching TV and listening to music. They actually don’t spend much time actually talking on their cell phones. Those 53 hours kids spend on media takes away from family time. Communication between parents and kids is almost non existent. I can remember before my son, Chris, got his license, I had to drive him every where. Bus service was almost non-existent in our community at that time. We used to talk about things while we were together in the car. I can remember thinking it would be great when Chris gets his license and can drive so that I won’t have to take him everywhere. It turned out to be great on one hand, but wasn’t on the other. Since he drove himself to whereever he had to go, we didn’t have that time together in the car to talk about things. I came to really miss that time. I felt I’d lost something precious. I would imagine now if I were driving Chris, we might not have those conversations because he would be wrapped up in his iPhone or Ipod or iSomething or other. That would be a shame.
Parents of course can limit the time kids get to spend on media. Some parents block incoming messages during homework time and after 11:00 pm. that sems like a good idea. I just had a thought. Teachers in schools have been encouraged to use web based tools as productivity tools to teach with and as a cognitive means to support learning. If using web based technology really catches on in schools so that all teachers use it in their classrooms to teach and to have their students create and demonstrate learning, how many hours a week will kids then spend using media 63, 73 ???. It’s kind of scary. Is that a good thing. I’m not sure.
Photo thanks to azureon2
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