IT IS A PHENOMENON that parents are only too well aware of and prompts bewilderment, some horror, and not a little awe. As the offspring sprawls on the carpet with one eye on the TV, one hand updates a social networking site and another tweets on the mobile between rounds of the X Factor. Upstairs, homework, accompanied by downloaded music, is a meandering trip into the internet. Multi-tasking in the electronic age.
New figures from a US study, reflecting trends that are evident here, show that children from eight to 18 are spending more than 53 hours a week (seven hours, 38 minutes a day) using entertainment media, up a quarter on a decade ago. And because of their attachment to multi-tasking, the total amount of content consumed has also increased by a quarter in the last five years to nearly 11 hours a day. One in three, for example, admits to multi-tasking as they do homework.
The study by the Kaiser Family Foundation of 2,000 children and young people finds that they spend more hours on the computer, in front of television, playing video games, texting and listening to music than an adult spends full-time at work. And the report confirms parental supicions of a correlation between heavy use of electronic media and poorer school performance, getting into trouble and children’s sense of unhappiness.
The report does show that parental efforts to reduce screen time, for example by not putting a TV in a bedroom or switching off during meals, pays off. Parents who set limits have children who consume less media.
The phenomenon reflects the huge surge since 2004 of personal ownership of devices among the young: a near doubling to two-thirds of eight to 18 year-olds own their own mobiles, and a quadrupling (to 76 per cent), own iPods and other MP3 players. A huge surge in PC ownership also reflects the evidence available in Ireland of similar trends. Internet activity has become routine here for children and the age at which they first “log on” has fallen from nine-10 in 2003, to seven or younger now, a National Centre for Technology in Education survey reported last year.
Forty five per cent of Irish teenagers claimed to use internet messaging services every day or almost every day, compared to one in ten in 2006, while Microsoft reported that 55 per cent of Irish teenagers have access to the internet without parental restrictions.
Young people in the US spend 38 minutes a day reading books, magazines or newspapers, compared to 43 minutes 10 years ago.