I am sure that many of the children in your life were thrilled to find the latest technology waiting for them under the tree this holiday season. From DSI's to Leap Frogs, ipads to Playstations, media and technology are evolving at a rapid pace, affecting our children in both positive and negative ways.
Earlier this month, Common Sense Media released a report, Zero to Eight: Children's Media Use in America. Here are just a few of the interesting facts that they found:
Even very young children are frequent digital media users: Of all children who have a computer in the home, the average age of first use was just 3 1/2.
Children under 2 spend twice as much time watching TV and videos as they do reading books: In a typical day, 47% of babies and toddlers under age one watch an average of nearly two hours per day of TV or DVDs. The number of hours using media for school-aged children tops out at 5.25 hours each day.
Broadcast television is the most accessible and widely used platform for educational content among lower income children: Educational TV is the ONLY type of educational content that lower-income children are more likely to consume than higher-income children. This includes pre-school, libraries, reading, early games, computers, and education technology (Leap Frogs, etc).
While Building Healthy Families realizes that in today's technologically driven world, media literacy plays an important role in school readiness and success, we know that positive interaction and direct instruction from a PARENT or CAREGIVER is the most important factor in determining school readiness and positive development. We encourage you to monitor technology time with your children and families and make a conscious effort to spend time together each day that is media free for the entire family!
For more information visit www.commonsensemedia.org
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