The almighty television
The Kaiser Family Foundation put together a media study, all races represented, to see who uses media the most. Northwestern University researchers analyzed the results and found that black and other minority children have far more media exposure than white children.
Minority youth, ages 8-18 have an average of 13 hours exposure to media a day, that’s a staggering 4.5 hours more than the average exposure of white youths.
The term media in this study covers everything from television and video games to cell phones and music, and here are the stats.
Television viewing (including, DVDs, mobile and online viewing) totaled 5 hours and 54 minutes a day for blacks, 5 hours and 21 minutes for Hispanics, 4 hours and 41 minutes for Asians and 3 hours 36 minutes for whites.
The average amount of recreational computer use (not for homework) was 2 hours 53 minutes a day for Asians, 1 hour 49 minutes for Hispanics, 1 hours 24 minutes for blacks and 1 hours 17 minutes for whites.
Reading for pleasure however, was almost even in all races, at an average of 30-40 minutes a day.
“In the past decade, the gap between minority and white youth’s daily media use has doubled for blacks and quadrupled for Hispanics,” the study’s director, says Ellen Wartella the studies director. She heads Northwestern Universities Center on Media and Human Development. “The big question is what these disparities mean for our children’s health and education.”
My question is, with school, homework, eating and sleeping, where are these kids getting all this time?