Teched out?

Students these days are always connected to some form of media. At least, that’s how 17-year-old Alejandra Duarte, of Bend, feels.

“I think that there’s really no way to avoid it.” She feels as if she — and her fellow teens — never really get away from the pull of electronics. She says students spend all day on their cell phones, either sending text messages or looking up information on the Internet. They go home and get on the computer. At night, they wind down their day with a bit of TV. “It’s constant,” Alejandra said. When students forget their phones at home, Alejandra says they freak out and talk about how lost they are without them.

Alejandra spends plenty of time on the computer, on her cell phone and watching TV, but she doesn’t necessarily think it’s all great. Asked how much media time is too much, Alejandra says, “I think we’ve almost reached that point now. There’s no getting away from it.”

Teens and younger kids are spending more and more time connected to computers, video games and television.

When the Kaiser Family Foundation examined how much actual time kids spent consuming media in 2004, researchers found students spent a little less than 6 1/2 hours a day on television, computers, video games, movies, books and music. “At that point, it seemed that young people’s lives were filled to the bursting point with media,” according to the foundation’s latest report.

But in five years, the amount of time kids spend consuming media during each day soared 20 percent. In 2009, the average child ages 8-18 spent more than 7 1/2 hours every day using media for entertainment purposes. And that doesn’t include any educational media use or time spent talking on or sending text messages with cell phones (an extra hour and a half a day).

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends children this age spend two hours or less per day on “screen time,” which includes computer, TV and video games. But clearly that is not the norm for most kids.

“The media has become a fabric in all of our lives,” said Dr. Ari Brown, a Texas pediatrician and member of the AAP’s Council on Communication and Media.

The numbers

So how are students spending their time? Watching television is the biggest draw, with kids spending nearly 4 1/2 hours each day watching TV (although more and more frequently they are doing so on their computers or other devices). Kids are spending more than 2 1/2 hours each day listening to music or other audio, an increase of 47 minutes from the 2004 report. Researchers attribute this jump to the increase in popularity of iPods and other portable electronic music players (the percentage of kids who own an MP3 player jumped from 18 percent in 2004 to 76 percent in 2009).

Kids spend nearly an hour and a half each day on computers and an hour and a quarter playing video games. Those two categories saw the biggest jump during the past decade, with kids in 1999 spending less than half an hour a day on each of those. When kids are on the computer, they spend most of their time social networking (on sites such as Facebook), playing games and visiting video Web sites (such as YouTube). Researchers say the increase in video game time is the result of an increase in the number of kids playing on an average day, which went from 39 percent in 1999 to 60 percent in 2009. And the kids who are playing are playing nearly twice as long, from about an hour a day to about two hours a day.

Time spent watching movies (25 minutes) and reading print (38 minutes) held essentially steady.

Students often performed two or more of these activities at once. In all, students spent 29 percent of their time multitasking. If each media use were added up separately, students experienced more than 10 1/2 hours of total media exposure.

Media use jumps tremendously when kids hit ages 11-14. That age range spent more time than any other consuming media, having it take up more than 8 1/2 hours of every day. Kids ages 11-14 spend an average of five hours a day watching TV and movies and an hour and a half playing video games.

Impact on kids

So what does all of this mean?

The short answer is, it’s hard to know. The Kaiser study found a negative connection between how much media kids consume and the grades they receive in school, as well as other measures of personal contentment such as boredom, sadness and getting in trouble. However, the study can’t determine whether there is a cause-and-effect relationship.

Researchers broke kids into three main categories: those who consume a light amount of media each day of three hours or less, moderate consumers of between three to 16 hours a day and heavy consumers of 16 or more hours a day. (In this part of the study, researchers used what they call “total media exposure,” which totals all the hours of use, even if they overlap because of multitasking. So if a student is surfing the Internet while watching TV for two hours, it would be counted as four hours, two for the Internet and two for the TV time.)

Heavy users were more likely to receive C’s or lower and were less likely to get good grades. Conversely, light media users were more likely to get good grades and less likely to get poor grades. Heavy media users were also more likely to report being often bored (60 percent versus 48 percent of light users), to get in trouble a lot (33 percent versus 16 percent of light users) and to be often sad or unhappy (32 percent versus 22 percent of light users).

Beyond this study, researchers in many fields are looking into the impact technology has on students’ brains. All of the multitasking — texting, TV, iPods, instant messaging, YouTube, etc — may have an impact on kids’ brains. The PBS show “Frontline” created a new on-air and online series called “Digital Nation,” which delved into the impact technology has on the brain. In the report, Stanford University professor Clifford Nass, who has been studying multitaskers, talks about the negative changes he’s seen in students in recent years. Through his research, he comes to this conclusion: “It turns out multitaskers are terrible at every aspect of multitasking. They get distracted constantly. Their memory is very disorganized. Recent work we’ve done suggests they’re worse at analytic reasoning.”

Yet multitasking, particularly among the young, is becoming increasingly popular. “Multitasking is one of the most dominant trends in the use of media, so we could be essentially dumbing down the world,” Nass told “Frontline.”

Other researchers worry about youths who feel a constant need to be connected and who find it hard to be still or quiet.

Alejandra contrasts her experiences with those her mom had as a teenager, waiting by the phone or sitting at home alone. Now Alejandra feels she is in “constant contact with people.”

Brown worries about whether technology is displacing the time kids used to spend outside playing. In addition, children used to have to be creative to find ways to entertain themselves. Now Brown has some concern this is “an entertained generation,” or one that always has some medium or source to provide entertainment. Brown also sees some connection between media use and a sedentary lifestyle as well as a lack of sleep.

Role of parents

Bend mom Brenda Layton sees some good aspects of technology, such as how Facebook allows her four kids to stay connected to cousins, aunts and uncles. But she also recognizes kids can abuse it, so she doesn’t let her kids have free reign and she monitors what they do online.

Parents who have rules about media use are more likely to have kids who spend less time with media, about three hours less per day, according to the report.

But not all parents have rules. In general a majority of kids ages 8-18 report their parents don’t have rules about how much time they can spend consuming media. Parents are much more likely to set rules for children regarding content versus time. So parents may restrict the types of computer sites kids can visit or the kind of TV shows they can watch versus how much time they spend on these activities. And as kids become teenagers, they are less likely to encounter rules from parents at all. Just 16 percent of those ages 15-18 have parental rules about how much time they can spend watching TV, compared with 47 percent of kids age 8-10.

Access is also important. Students who have a TV in their bedroom spend about an hour more per day watching TV, according to the report.

Brown encourages parents to keep computers and televisions out of kids’ bedrooms, in part to ensure students get to bed on time, but says she understands why they don’t. “It’s totally easier.” Kids can fall asleep watching TV, and many parents do it, too. Asking parents to put limit on kids is also asking them to limit themselves. These kind of restrictionst can “change an entire family’s lifestyle,” said Brown.

“It’s good for parents to be a good role model. Get off the couch, get off the computer.”

Prineville resident Jeffrey Berkebile, 15, says his parents don’t have specific rules about media use. They just occasionally come by when he’s watching TV or playing a video game and say, “Why don’t you take a break?” But compared with the national average, Jeffrey doesn’t spend too much time consuming media such as TV and video games. At most, he guesses two hours a day, plus he reads for fun, about an hour a day. With the rest of his time, Jeffrey enjoys being outside, camping, fishing and playing sports.

Redmond mom Darla Hubbard has a few rules about her 16-year-old son’s computer and video game use. After she noticed her son Cameron was “getting overly consumed” on video games, she decided to limit him to one hour per day. As long as he is doing well in school, doing his chores and staying out of trouble, she “gives him some leeway.”

Hubbard, who refers to herself a “tech head,” calls the computer “the best and worst thing ever invented.” It’s time consuming and a “big fat pain,” but also helps make life easier, says Hubbard.

In many ways Cameron agrees with his mom, calling computers a necessary evil. “Frankly I think we should decrease some of our dependence on it.” Still, he guesses he spends about 10-12 hours a week playing video games and doesn’t necessarily appreciate the time restrictions his mom imposes, even if he understands why she has them in place. “Sometimes I get annoyed at her for having them, because games entertain my brain.”