New figures about kids’ media consumption have just been released in a Kaiser Family Foundation Report*, confirming behavior and trends parents of teens see every day:

• Kids between 8 – 18 spend 6 ½ hours a day, or 44 ½ hours per week using media,
• Media multi-tasking is the new trend, with kids using more than one media at a time – for instance going online while watching TV. Accounting for multi-tasking time, kids are actually spending the equivalent of 8½ hours using media daily,
• Children with easy access to media tend to spend more time using those media.

Parents have to ask ourselves what role we have in this [excessive] degree of media consumption. Look at what parents have allowed:

• 63% of all 8 – 18 year olds have a TV in their bedroom,
• 49% have a video game player in their room, and
• 31% have a computer in their room,
• Kids with a TV in their bedroom watch 1.2 hours more TV daily than those without a bedroom TV.

And parents complain that they have difficulty communicating with their kids? No wonder.
Here is more data to examine:

• 53% of the 2000 kids surveyed for the Kaiser Family Foundation survey say their families have no rules about TV watching,
• 46% say they have rules, but only 20% say these rules are enforced “most” of the time,
• 63% of kids live in homes where the TV is usually on during meals,
• 51% say the TV is on most of the time, whether anyone is watching it or not.

Parents express concern about the “plugged-in” lives that our kids lead. They wonder what kind of an impact this media consumption will have on our kids. Are our children developing strong interpersonal communication skills? Are our kids’ abilities to concentrate impacted by the degree of multi-tasking in which they immerse themselves?

The jury is still out on the long-term impact of these cultural communication shifts. But this much is for sure: Parents are not passive bystanders. If parents want to improve communication with their teenagers, they can begin by unplugging kids’ bedrooms, and by turning off the tube.

*source: Generation M: Media in the Lives of 8 - 18 year Olds. Kaiser Family Foundation; March 2005

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