It's a digital life

Television used to be the bane of educators and concerned parents who were worried about children being plopped down in front of the TV, which became a de facto babysitter. Worried about TV's effect on childhood development, and backed by studies that show excessive viewing is not good for children, some advocates spread the word years ago with a popular bumper sticker. It simply said: Kill your television.

Those folks must be stupefied now considering that children can watch TV on a cell phone. That is, well, child's play for this generation, which is growing up attached to electronics, including computers, hand-held devices, video games, mp3 players and cell phones.

A recent survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that American children 8 to 18 years old spend more than 53 hours a week with electronic media. That works out to 7 hours and 38 minutes a day. A decade ago, children were using electronic media an average of 6 hours and 19 minutes a day.

Vicky Rideout, director of Kaiser's Program for the Study of Media and Health, told USA Today that electronic media are now "a part of the air that kids breathe.

It's no wonder. Two-thirds of the nation's children have cell phones and three-quarters have mp3 players. Twenty percent of the media children use come via mobile devices.

Watching television is still king × 4 hours and 29 minutes a day × although it may come via a computer or a hand-held device. Video games account for 73 minutes a day, and music or audio averages 2 hours and 31 minutes a day.

Children's time is consistently filled with electronic media. The Kaiser study found that children multitask with electronic devices for at least three hours a day. Amanda Lenhart of the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project joked that iPods and cell phones may be this generation's version of "magazines and chewing gum.

Rideout said she was "frankly astonished at the amount of time children are glued to a screen or an iPod and said, "Anything that takes up this much time, we really do need to think about it and talk about it.

Technology has evolved at a mind-boggling pace over the past several years. People are communicating in ways never considered just a few years ago, and they are communicating constantly. Children are on the cutting edge of technology and are an eager audience.

Although the effect of their use of electronic devices is yet to be seen, it stands to reason that, given the well-known adverse effects of long exposures to TV for children, all this electronic media can't be good for this generation, particularly when children are watching or listening to media for the equivalent of a full workday.

The reality is that children will use this new technology, which is not going away. However, parents need to encourage their children to take the time to put the electronics down and play outdoors, read, talk to people face to face and experience life. Children need to understand that technology is just a tool, not a way of life.