A new study released by The Kaiser Family Foundation stated that tweens and teens (ages 8 - 18), spend approximately 7 hours and 38 minutes a day engaged in media. That is a total of 53 hours a week. When media multitasking was included, the number was even more astounding: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, M2: Media in the Lives of 8-to 18-Year-Olds, suggests that excessive media usage may have a negative impact on student learning:
When it comes to report cards, the Kaiser report finds a difference between heavy and light media users, though researchers note that they haven't determined cause and effect. Nearly half of all heavy media users, those who consume more than 16 hours a day (including time spent multitasking), say they usually get "fair or poor" grades compared with about a quarter of light users (less than 3 hours).
The full article and study (PDF) are both available online.
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