Did You Hear The One About Teens Spending 9 Hours A Day With Media? Not So Fast…

There was an article that criss-crossed all the major news outlets not too long ago, touting the “new landmark study” illuminating how much time tweens and teens spend with media. To be honest, the reporting and headlines really upset me – but not because I think there is something wrong with how tweens and teens today use media. Rather, the way the study is being presented focuses on shock value as opposed to what the data really tells us. Here are some of my favorite headlines from the news about the same study:

When our kids first enter elementary school, we start to worry a bit less about them hurting themselves every moment and more about others hurting them – whether it’s stranger danger or peer issues. We worry that they have friends that invite them to play, that they have people to sit with at lunch, that no one is bullying them, that they don’t talk to or go with a stranger that might approach them at the park.

In the past few years, those fears have extended beyond just their physical world into the online world as well. The internet has become part of most every child’s life and it’s the rare child that has no experience with it by the time they are 8 years old.