Kids should curtail media consumption

By Jeffrey M. McCall

A deluge of mediated messages has enveloped the lives of America’s young people, and the onslaught has yet to max out. Kids are spending more and more of their waking hours consuming some sort of media.

From television to video games to online viewing, kids’ lives are being squandered in front of a screen. And mobile devices now mean that young people can absorb video messages while on the go.

Parents (and grandparents) who wonder why so many of today’s kids are easily distracted, fatigued, overweight and doing poorly in school should ponder the disturbing results from recent studies of kids’ media usage.

A Kaiser Family Foundation study released last month shows the average child ages 8-18 spends seven hours and 38 minutes each day in front of a screen, an increase of an hour and 17 minutes compared to just five years ago. If multitasking is considered, the total media consumption is 10 hours and 45 minutes per day.

On top of that, young people in grades 7-12 spend an average of one hour and 35 minutes a day sending and receiving text messages, and this time is not counted in the 7:38 media screen use data referenced above.

Many kids spend more time consuming media than they do sleeping, or all other nonmedia activities combined. Even if all of this media consumption were of high-quality, educational programs, there would be reason for concern.

Research has shown that too much television is generally counterproductive, independent of the content viewed. Given that much of the consumed media is, indeed, of questionable quality, the concern grows greater.

Research by the Nielsen Co. shows that children ages 2-5 spend more than 32 hours each week in front of a television screen. Kids are clearly becoming video dependent early on and carrying that habit throughout childhood.

The Kaiser research reports that less than a third of all kids live under any parental rules regarding media use.

Not surprisingly, kids whose parents do impose rules watch almost three hours a day less than kids who have no such rules.

Almost three-quarters of all kids now have televisions in their bedrooms. That means most viewing is done with no supervision or parental awareness of what the kids are watching.

It is worth noting that this research is not coming out of some alarmist, fringe group. The Nielsen Co. is the nation’s major television research firm.

The Kaiser research was done in consultation with the respected research firm Harris Interactive, and with faculty members at Stanford University.

Beyond the obvious concern about what messages the kids absorb from television, video games, etc., parents also need to be concerned about what messages kids create for the media. Young people now want to celebritize themselves by producing goofy YouTube videos, social networking messages, and even “sexting,” usually without any thought of the broader ramifications of such mass communication.

Young people feel compelled to use and consume media as part of their lifestyle. Media overuse, however, has become a sort of cultural massage, leading kids to believe they are functioning, relevant, productive and cool based largely on how much and how adept they are in media use.

This media dependency creates a false sense of reality and ultimately disempowers young people. A kid whose existence is dominated by media will find it hard to reach his or her full potential. When kids displace real life for a sea of media, school activities, studying, exercise, and even direct contact with family and other humans are necessarily diminished.

The Federal Communications Commission is collecting input for an inquiry on “serving and protecting children and empowering parents in an evolving media landscape.” That bureaucracy will be limited as to what it can do.

First lady Michelle Obama joined Surgeon General Regina Benjamin recently at an event in Virginia to discuss the problem of obesity in the nation. Both briefly mentioned the importance of reducing television time for kids as part of addressing childhood obesity.

That’s a start. The first lady and surgeon general would be well advised to ramp up the rhetoric on limiting television. It will take a full-court press by high-profile leaders to get this message delivered, because you can bet big media corporations won’t help on this account, and sadly, most schools have shown little interest in creating media literate young citizens who can make sensible decisions about media use.

Jeffrey M. McCall is a professor of communication at DePauw University in Greencastle, Ind., and author of “Viewer Discretion Advised: Taking Control of Mass Media Influences.”