Christina Zuo to whom it may concern: If you ask any teen on the street what they do on their spare time, the answer you’re getting is probably has something involving electronic. Kids or teens these days spend so much time with electronic media – cell phones, iPods, computer, video games – they might as well make it a full time job. According to Kaiser Family Foundation’s recent study, teens spent more than 53 hours a week on an electronic device.
Kids spent every waking minute – except for the time for school – on a computer or a cell phone. Kids from age 8 to 18 spend more than eight hours a day with such devices, compared with less than six and a half hours five years ago when the study was last conducted. These hours does not include the time they spend on texting or talking on the phone.
With all the time kids spent with electronics, the only thing that seems to be fading is ink. Though daily book readership has held steady at about 47% since 1999, the percentage of young people who say they read a magazine every day has plummeted from 55% to 35%. It's worse for newspapers, down from 42% to 23%.
Who should be concern about all this? The more kids spend on playing time, the less the studying will occur. The heavy media use is associated with several negatives, including behavior problems and lower grades.
So is it a bad thing for kids to spend all our time on these electronics? I’d say no. We have all seen in movies or TV shows on how human predicts what the future would be like, where everything is electronic, and we fly around wearing space suits. Consider all this electronic usage a step closer to the future.
Try spending a day without the cell phones or computer we use. One may find it rather ok, and that life is livable. Try spending a whole week or month without the electronics we have, see how the results turns out.
Dr. Michael Rich, a pediatrician at Children’s Hospital Boston who directs the Center on Media and Child Health, said that with media use so ubiquitous, it was time to stop arguing over whether it was good or bad and accept it as part of children’s environment, “like the air they breathe, the water they drink and the food they eat.” If we don’t have the devices we use now, it just seems like our lives incomplete. We are glued to our cell phones, computers, etc.
It’s not just kids who are always using the electronic devices; adults are always on it too. There’s no wrong doing is this situation. We use all the electronic media to connect with the rest of the world. The devices are there to make our life easier, and just simply a bit better.
A simple solution to the teenage over using electronics should just be disciplining them. The right ways to control the over usage is to see the behavior of the person. Does all that much time spend on the electronics changing your kid in a negative way? Is the child slacking in school? Is the child glued to the devices so much, they can’t even act normal? If you, the parent should set rules and guidelines on when to use the device, what’s the usage for and how long to use it.
Victoria Rideout, a Kaiser vice president who is lead author of the study, said that although it has become harder for parents to control what their children do, they can still have an effect. “I don’t think parents should feel totally disempowered,” she said. “They can still make rules, and it still makes a difference.” Kids can have once a week activity, where they don't use electronics and spend the day reading, or going out to play.
Very interesting topic! I once read that because so many children are now using more electronics inside the house rather than playing outside the house that more children are becoming obese. While they are in the house they are not getting enough exercise and are just sitting down while playing with their electronics. This is something that parents should look into.
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