“There is a huge void in leadership among [tech] companies in terms of the implications of what they are creating,” Jim Steyer, founder/CEO of Common Sense Media, said at the unveiling in Washington, DC, of the organization’s new report on tween and teen media use. “The tech industry has made tens of billions of dollars off this market yet there’s almost a complete lack of thought as to the implications.” Consider this: Teenagers (ages 13-18) in the U.S. average 9 hours per day of entertainment media use though some usage can occur simultaneously while tweens (8-12) use an average of 6 hours of entertainment media daily, according to the Common Sense Census: Media Use By Teens study, which surveyed 2,600 children ages 8-18. Among other highlights from the report:
Watching television and listening to music still dominate entertainment consumption of teens and tweens; only 10 percent of teens choose social media as their favorite media activity; nearly two-thirds of teens who multitask say they don’t think watching TV (63 percent), texting (64 percent) or using social media (55 percent) while doing homework makes any difference in their work quality. Gender differences continue to be pronounced, with just 5 percent of girls saying they play videogames every day vs. 23 percent of boys. And teens from lower-income families spend an average of 2.45 hours more with media per day than those from higher-income families.