Too Much Technology

1432 Words6 Pages
“Young people today live media saturated lives, spending an average of nearly 6 ½ hours a day (6.21) with media.” (Foeher, Rideout, Roberts, 2005, pg. 6) There are many forms of electronic media that are associated with this as well as many problems that can affect children because of over use of them as well. Looking at it from this aspect one may ask: Is there such a thing as too much technology? Technology, in the form of electronic and social media, is dominant in many children’s lives today. Six and a half hours may not sound like an extreme amount of time, but this is nearly the same amount of time a child spends at school daily. This together is already nearly thirteen hours gone from a twenty- four hour day. Now let us add in an average of eight hours of sleep a day and that thirteen becomes twenty-one hours leaving roughly only three hours left for other activities such as family time, physical activity, and personal care. Also included in this 3 hour period is a child’s study or homework time which is roughly 50 minutes or less on the average. Technological advances are often thought of as a good thing and when used in the right way, at the right time, for the right reasons this can be true. Unfortunately many present day youths only see these media devices as a way to socialize or relieve boredom. These devices include but are not limited to be the following: television, gaming systems, iPods, cell phones and computers. Although items like the computer can be used to aid in learning and development “teens are heavy users of new communication forms such as instant messaging, email, text messaging, as well as communication-oriented Internet sites such as blogs, social networking, photo and video sharing sites such as YouTube, interactive video games, and virtual reality environments, such as second life.”(Greenfield, Subrahmanyam, 2008, pg.
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