Common
Sense Media, a nonprofit organization found that 98 percent of USA homes with
children now have a mobile device such as a tablet or smartphone.
That's a
huge leap from 52 percent just six years ago. Mobile devices are now just as
common as televisions in family homes.
And the
average amount of time USA smallest children spend with those handheld devices
each day is skyrocketing, too: from five minutes a day in 2011, to 15 minutes a
day in 2013, to 48 minutes a day in 2017.
James Steyer,
CEO and founder of Common Sense Media, says this is "fundamentally
redefining childhood experiences" with "enormous implications we have
just begun to understand."
Other highlights
from the survey:
- 42 percent of young children
now have their own tablet device — up from 7 percent four years ago
and less than 1 percent in 2011.
- Nearly half, 49 percent, of
children 8 or under "often or sometimes" use screens in the hour
before bedtime, which experts say is bad for sleep habits.
- 42 percent of parents say the TV is on "always" or "most of the time" in their home, whether anyone is watching or not. Research has shown this so-called "background TV" reduces parent-child interaction, which in turn can hurt language development.
The growth of mobile is a dramatic change. But other aspects of kids' media use have been more stable over time, this periodic census reveals.
When you
take every source of screen media together, children 8 and under spend an average
of about 2 1/4 hours (2:19) a day, a figure that is flat from 2011 (2:16). That
implies mobile is apparently cannibalizing, not adding on to, the boob tube and
other types of media.
And,
whether young kids are looking at small screens or big ones, most often they
are passively watching videos, not using interactive apps. Video watching has
dominated children's media use for decades.
Finally,
young children are still being read to by their parents about 30 minutes a day.
What does
all this mean? Researchers don't really know.
The public
conversation about kids and screens is somewhat schizophrenic. American schools
are buying millions of electronic devices, and there are tens of thousands of
apps meant to enhance learning for even the smallest babies.
On the
other hand, doctors warn, and parents worry, about negative effects from too
much screen time, ranging from obesity to anxiety.
Unlike in
previous years, this census shows both rich and poor families now appear to
have nearly equal access to smartphones. At the same time, kids from
lower-income families are spending twice as much time with screens daily as
those from the most advantaged families. Is this a boon or a danger?
Lynn
Schofield Clark at the University of Denver studies media use with a focus on
disadvantaged youth and youth of color. She says the missing ingredient in
understanding the real impact of the digital divide is parenting time.
"People
who have more advantages have more time and education to help their kids use
the technology," she explains. "We have set up a society where it's
structurally very difficult for families to spend time together."
From NPR (edited)
