By Liku Zelleke
American teenagers between the ages of 13 and 18 spend an average of nine hours a day using entertainment media, while kids between the ages of 8 and 12 spend an average of six hours a day doing the same.
This alarming news comes by way of “The Common Sense Census: Media Use by Tweens and Teens,” a report just released by Common Sense Media following a study that intended to show the broad picture of youth and their use of social media in the U.S.
Although a substantial minority, there are still a few tweens and teens that aren’t attached to any screen media – about 6%. 28% of tweens and 17% of teens use them for two hours or less, 27% of tweens and 31% of teens use them from four to eight hours a day, and 11% of tweens and 26% of teens stare at screens for over eight hours a day.
That is a lot of screen-staring time, especially when taking into consideration the fact that a large proportion of these kids are doing the staring on mobile devices, which “now account for 41 percent of all screen time among tweens and 46 percent among teens.”
The next valid question would be, “What are they doing all that time?”
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