Parenting: What to Do Until There's an App for That

Do you have fifteen minutes a day that you could spend teaching your young child to love physical fitness and teaching them desirable character qualities such as patience, truthfulness and compassion? I hope so because there are plenty of advertisers, writers of inane television shows and others with their own agenda that are vying for your child’s attention and loyalty.

The Kaiser Family Foundation issued their report on the time 8-18 year olds are spending interacting with entertainment media. They surveyed more than 2,000 students from Oct. 2008 to May 2009. They found that each day the average child is devoting seven and a half hours to their smart phones,computer, television or other electronic devises. Due to multi-tasking they actually are exposed to eleven hours of media within that seven and a half hours. On top of that, they spend an hour and a half texting and a half hour talking on the phone. Because these numbers reflect an average, there were students using media up to 16 hours a day!

This media use grew a full hour since the last time Kaiser studied this issue. With the increasing ease of access this is not likely to change. Parents who set boundaries as to when and where media can be used were the most successful at limiting their child’s exposure. When you take something away it’s good to replace it with something better. Time with you, your undivided attention might just be the perfect substitute for some of that smart phone time. What do you think?