The recent stats released by the Kaiser Family Foundation on adolescent media consumption have raised eye brows. The report indicates that youth 8-18 spend an average of 7 hours 38 minutes consuming media a day and more than 10 hours if you count multitasking. Wow! This much of anything, let alone media, must be a bad thing.
Then I began to think about this. I am guessing my media consumption possibly doubles these totals. Sound appalling? I even have the data. I sit in my university or home office I am guessing 8-10 hours a day and my music is playing all of the time. According to LastFm, I have listened to 97,077 songs since Nov, 19, 2006. I watch a little CNN when I am not in the office and a ball game now and then. Actually, I take the comment about a few ball games back, I watch lots of baseball in the summer, possibly checking my computer and reading at the same time – the music from the computer playing in the background. You can consume a lot of media during a baseball game. I listen to my iPod and watch television while working out. I spend probably 1-2 hours a day reading as part of my work. There is an occasional movie. Using the multitasking definition applied by the Kaiser Foundation, I am certain there are days when my media consumptions is greater than 24 hours.
So, I am guessing the shock value of these numbers may detract from more important issues. More important questions might focus on the purposeful consumption of media for specific purposes. When some of my colleagues in the Music department “listen” to music the intent and the focus is likely very different. I likely “listen” to more hours of music than some of them. but these numbers really explain little about purpose or impact. When I was a kid, I remember spending huge amounts of time reading. I literally read every sports book available in the library I could access. This is not a syntax error – I do mean that the library was a bus that came with books once a week and we could visit and borrow what we wanted. My access to a library was via a bookmobile and was limited. This activity probably developed my comprehension skills and possibly my vocabulary, but likely did little to develop other skills and knowledge that can be developed through reading. My reading habits involved lots of quantity, but not much diversity. Any assumptions regarding how effectively my reading habits developed my understanding of the world would not be informed by knowing what amount of time I spent.
So, the music has been playing as I wrote this post – wracking up the hours trying to keep ahead of the kids. I have now listened to 97083 songs.
There does appear to be a relationship to grades in the Generation M study.
NY Times recently released a lesson plan based on these data.
