The Times is reporting a recent Pew study that has some revealing findings about the amount of time kids spend online.
Those ages 8 to 18 spend more than seven and a half hours a day with such devices, compared with less than six and a half hours five years ago, when the study was last conducted. And that does not count the hour and a half that youths spend texting, or the half-hour they talk on their cellphones.
Even academics in communication are shocked:
“This is a stunner,†said Donald F. Roberts, a Stanford communications professor emeritus who is one of the authors of the study. “In the second report, I remember writing a paragraph saying we’ve hit a ceiling on media use, since there just aren’t enough hours in the day to increase the time children spend on media. But now it’s up an hour.â€
What I find interesting about this report is how integrated the Internet has become in the daily lives of youth. It almost seems silly to call internet use “being online,” because there’s really not much of an “on” anymore–it’s as though we’re always there.
My feeling is that this may also have implications on how much we will be able to regulate internet use (ie: laws on downloading, etc). At a minimum, these laws may meet some resistance, and attempts to regulate structurally (packet inspection) won’t go unnoticed.
via If Your Kids Are Awake, They’re Probably Online – NYTimes.com.