Becoming addicted to something happens before you know it and the obsession often eats you alive. A scary truth unveils that American teens cuddle their electronic devices for seven and a half hours a day, in which they practically play around with their smart phones for every waking minute, according to a study from the Kaiser Family Foundation.
New York Times revealed this shocking finding on January 21; the Kaiser Family Foundation surveyed 2000 American youths between the ages 8 to 18 from October of 2008 to May of 2009, and found that the average amount of time young Americans are exposed to electronic devices is seven and a half hours a day. And this is an increase of one hour compared to 2004.
Not to mention that they multitask by surfing on the Internet while listening to music or watching videos. They load additional three to four hours and all together they are exposed to approximately 11 hours of media content in their daily lives.
For instance, Francisco Sepulveda, a 14-year-old Bronx eighth grader, uses his smart phone to listen to music, surf the Internet, and send or receive around 500 text messages a day. This finding, irritates parents since it is told by the popular media that heavy exposure can lead to behavioral problems and low grades. As cutting-edge, inspiring mobile technology like iPods and PDP brought media access into youths' pockets and beds, this finding is almost becoming a conventional wisdom leaving no doors open for solution.
According to Dr. Michael Rich, a pediatrician at a children's hospital in Boston, the media access is ubiquitous so instead of fighting against it, we should consider it as part of children's life, "like the air they breathe, the water they drink and the food they eat."
There are many controversies over whether high level of media access brings detrimental effects to humans. Some other studies link heavy media use with obesity and that troubled youths turn to more media access, but there are no specific evidence to substantiate these arguments, yet.
