I was reading an article today on the PC World website about a study recently done by the Kaiser Family Foundation. According to the study, an average adolescent (ages 8 years to 18 years) spends 7.5 hours consumed by some sort of electronic media. This is a startling amount of time spent perusing useless websites and listening to mindless music. This number doesn't even include the fact that the kids are usually multitasking and using multiple mediums at once. If this was included, the amount of time jumps to 11 hours per day of media consumption.
These facts boggle my mind and make me wonder what kind of society we would be if kids used half of that time doing their homework or simply reading a book. I know for myself that when I spend an hour or two online, only about 20 minutes of that was actually used in doing something constructive. Most of the time when I get on the computer I forget my purpose completely and, instead, waste the little time that I had looking at YouTube videos or checking my friends status updates on Facebook.
Bringing back to my point on the state of our education system, I think if we take less time and money worrying about having the best technology in schools and worry more about the strength of our educators and curriculum our country, as a whole, would be a better place.
