Slashdot Mirror
New Study Shows Youth Plugged In Most of the Day
An anonymous reader writes "The amount of time youngsters are spending on the web has ballooned to exceed the average adult's full working week, according to a new study. A few years ago, the same researchers thought that teens and tweens were consuming about as much media as possible in the hours available. But now they've have found a way to pack in even more. Young people now devote an average of seven hours and 38 minutes to daily media use, or about 53 hours a week according to Kaiser Family Foundation findings released today."
To click through and download the PDF :38 :25
TV 4:29
Music/Audio 2:31
Computer 1:29
Video Games 1:13
Print
Movies
With a 29% multitasking cut, so from 10:45 total it comes down to 7:38
Not really sure this is all that surprising to me, it's hard for me to feel alarmed over the print and music portions of the time.
The survey taker's school "doesn't use grades" for 0% of heavy users, 3% of medium users, and 10% of light users. This statistic by itself makes me unconvinced about the overall findings...do you mean to tell me that 0% of heavy internet users attend schools that don't give grades? What the hell is the sample size, anyway???
Amateurs.
Researchers have recently discovered gamblers like money, scholars spend lots of time reading and fishermen are often on boats.
What concerns me most is that the next generation might spend more time reading about something and not have the time to actually DO them. I find the information overload very annoying already at work. Mostly emails. And I feel myself slowly being trained into ASKING for the info rather than experimenting and have your own observation in things.
Don't know how to put it in better words.
No wonder they can't find time to spell properly.
Your typical teenager probably doesn't even use a pen, and the majority of their communication would be on a device with a built-in spell checker. IT is as though they go out of their way to spell like an idiot. Is it really that much more efficient to type "Im going 2 da park"?
As technology gets smarter, we as a society will be getting dumber. We are setting ourselves up to be completely pwnd by Skynet.
Do you or your partner snore? - Visit www.snoring.com.au
Yes... If only /. readers were in charge, things would be different. Very, very different (I'll have nightmares tonight).
Entomologically speaking, the spider is not a bug, it's a feature.
An individual spends a certain amount of time asleep, a certain amount at school or working (or housekeeping, or whatever), a certain amount eating, washing(!), travelling and all the other miscelleanea of living. Then they have some time spare - is that such a surprise?
All this study does is tell those people who believe studies what those individuals spend their time doing. Would you prefer they spend that time drinking, instead?
Oh yes, that thing about multi-tasking media. All that tells us is how unfulfilling sources like TV are - people don't actually *watch* it, they just have it on in the background (while doing something more interesting) just in case something worthy of their attention does happen. That's all TV is today - whatever age you are.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Yes: kids would have reached these levels of online consumption 10 years ago and we'd already have brain chips connecting us to the Interwebs 24/7 so we wouldn't need to keep those clumsy netbooks next to the bed for midnight porn surfing.
Don't blame the children.
They are not the ones that decide to pay less on education and that ebonics or it's more recent equivalent is good enough.
We are paying more than we were 20 years ago yet children are doing worse in school.
The problem isn't with the money (maybe in some districts) but the way they teach kids now.
My daughter was not taught how to read using phonics, she was taught using "sight words." I asked the teacher she wasn't learning the multiplication table and the teacher said that it was not taught anymore because they prefered 'concepts.' As a result, my daughter does multiplication (not addition but multiplication!!!!) using her fingers. She reads well now due to the time I have spent with her but her writing is still terrible (but it looks pretty.)
Now I fully admit that I should have taken the time to have taught her myself instead of relying on the school system. But I do remember being taught these things when I went to school. And passing out a multiplication table or phonics sheet is not expensive.
Now they'll be too busy to get on my lawn!
My girlfriend is 12 years younger than me and it is true. She is getting plugged most of the day. Hey, can you blame me?
No, I wouldn't blame you, as long as you're the one plugging her.
not much, just being forced to manually insert line breaks into my comment
ROFLMAO
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
When you see kids insisting on incorrect spelling/grammar online, it's not necessarily because the medium encourages bastardizing the language in every instance. It's a desire to cool by being anti-intellectual. In their minds, only a nerd and an adult takes out the times to make everything they type in informal settings 'perfect.' We even do it here in sophisticated places like Slashdot. When someone brings up or wants to enforce the subtle differences between affect and effect, we just hand-wave it, call them grammar Nazis, and move on. It's the same thing. So next time you feel like blindly criticizing the next generation, why not try holding that critical lens to yourself as well?