Review of KFF's Report:

Kids & Media @ the New Millennium

By Pam Steager 

Which media do you use? How often? Where? With whom? These were the questions researchers asked the youth of America recently, in the first study in several decades to gather information about all kinds of media behaviors. Some of what they found is not surprising. Today's kids spend more time with more media than any generation before them. 

For many of their grandparents, the media environment of childhood consisted of newspapers and magazines, radio, a record player and an occasional movie. Entering the 21st century, the typical American child lives in a home with three television sets, two VCRs, three radios, three tape players, two CD players, a videogame system and a computer. Only 11 percent of American children and teens live in homes with one TV. 

The study, Kids & Media @ the New Millennium, sponsored by the Kaiser Family Foundation, looked at both media use── the amount of children' s daily time that they spent with media, and media exposure── the additional hours of media kids are exposed to because they are using several media at the same time. The researchers found that television is the most-used medium for children throughout childhood and into adolescence. After the age of 14, however, TV viewing declines and the use of music media increases until the two are almost tied by the age of 18. 

High-school students also play videogames less, go to movies less and read less than younger students. Why do you think that is? The researchers don't know for sure, but they suspect it's because high-school students are too busy doing other things like sports, school plays, homework, clubs and parties. A similar decline was noticed in kids of all ages who come from families with higher incomes, so perhaps the more activity options you have, the less time you spend using media. For many teens, media use is a default activity what you do when there s nothing better to do. 

Today's kids spend more time with more media than any generation before them.  Boys and girls use media differently, the study showed. It's probably no surprise that boys spend more time playing video and computer games, or that they prefer sports or action/adventure content in all the media they use. Girls spend about five minutes more per day than boys with print media (books, magazines, newspapers). But after the age of 8, girls spend more than half an hour more per day with music media (radio, CDs and tapes). Overall, boys average more media-use time than girls, due mostly to their videogame playing. 

For both boys and girls, especially the older ones, a lot of their media use is done either alone or without adult supervision. Among junior- and senior-high students, more than 30 percent of television viewing is spent mainly alone. Only 25 percent of kids 14 years and older say they have rules about TV viewing in their home. 

The Kids & Media @ the New Millennium report shows that media use among youth has changed dramatically in the last few decades. Are these statistics true for you and your friends? What was the media environment when your parents and grandparents were children? What do you think it will be like for your children? What changes would you predict for the future?