Yikes -- this is REALLY scary!  Check out the chart, which shows that over the past decade, kids are spending less time reading and much more time watching TV, listening to music, and playing video games.

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January 20, 2010

If Your Kids Are Awake, They’re Probably Online

By TAMAR LEWIN

www.nytimes.com/2010/01/20/education/20wired.html

The average young American now spends practically every waking minute — except for the time in school — using a smart phone, computer, television or other electronic device, according to a new study from the Kaiser Family Foundation.

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.

And because so many of them are multitasking — say, surfing the Internet while listening to music — they pack on average nearly 11 hours of media content into that seven and a half hours.