Science and Tech Blog: Article 2 01-24-2010

Kids and Media

Are kids now a days consuming too much media? The Kaiser Family Foundation came out with a study that monitored media consumption in the lives of todays kids between the ages of 8 to 18 years old. The results were astonishing; the average showed over 7.5 hours of media consumption daily. That’s just under 1/3 of every day. The study was so exact that it showed that the most consuming was done by the black and Hispanic “tweens.” The growth of media consumption is outrageous, up one hour from 2004. Will this type of growth continue?

Absolutely. This very article posed this same question years back, thinking that media consumption couldn’t possibly get any larger, but we proved them wrong. Media is all around us, most obviously on our t.v.’s, radios, and billboards, but now media is branching out to mobile apps on the new smart phones, youtube.com videos now host advertisement and every video played, Facebook pages have advertisement up and down each margin giving the consumer a double dose. With all this media surrounding us, teens included, does this have a positive or negative overall effect?

I believe it can have both. As the article points out, it’s like the consumption of our daily diets. If we consume healthy foods and drink nutritious liquids, we can produce a positive outcome. Meanwhile, the opposite is as equally possible. It is all in the hands of the consumer. I personally cannot see a change in this trend for years to come.

When I was in elementary school, our class would use the computer lab a total of two hours a week using programs to help our learning. Now, as a college student, I am consuming more than two hours of media before my first class begins every morning. And then once I do get to class, most of my professors start class with a PowerPoint presentation plastered with youtube clips that help illustrate their point, then for homework we are assigned to go online for research.

Media consumes our lives, young and old, and as more time passes, it will continue to trickle down to younger and younger consumers, but it’s not always a bad deal, if used correctly. The internet is an infinite atmosphere of knowledge and greatness, we just need to pilot out rocket ships around the harmfulness.