The Annenberg Public Policy Center has released its most recent report on kids and the media. Here are a few interesting findings.
The average child in the U. S. aged 2-17 spends 4 ¸ hours a day in front of some sort of screen. That includes TVs, video games, and the Internet.
Home computers are about as common as cable subscriptions.
Three of every five children age 12 to 17 have a TV in their room.
WALLY's COMMENT . . . Another interesting finding in this is that the number of homes with cable subscriptions and the number of homes with Internet connections is just about equal.
Each new generation grows up and naturally assimilates skills and understandings that come hard to older generations. In the case of those now in their teens, there's an amazing facility with the transient delivery of information. In prior generations, the primary modem which information was delivered, at least the official mode, shows on paper. Today it's through some kind of screen.
The study didn't address what different technologies these kids use, but I would bet that pagers, cell phones, and other digital tools are extremely common in this age group as well.
For those of us who are a bit past their seventeenth birthday, the challenges to assimilate the grammar of new communication media. Older generations learned that fairly effectively with television, but we haven't made the switch to handling immediate and transient information delivery. There's no shortcut to this. It means spending time, trying things out, and being more than a little uncomfortable some of the time.
For now, think of it this way.
For Baby Boomers, digital information and transient information technology is bolted on to the way they already do things. This generation uses the technology to shop the way it's always shopped and gather information from the same sources.
For Generation Xers, digital and transient information is something that they've become comfortable with. They've modified their other patterns to accommodate the new technologies.
For Generation Y, the group that's just now entering the workforce and college, digital and transient information is natural.
If you're in business, look over this model to determine where and how to market. If you're a parent, use it to identify ways that generations can learn from each other.
Created/Revised/Reviewed: 1/00
Reviewed: 2/15/03
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