June 8, 2011 | 3:18 PM |

Study: Minority Kids Spend Most Waking Hours Plugged In To Media

FILED UNDER: Medicine/Science, Personal Health, children's health, media, screen time

Study: Minority kids spend up to 13 hours on average plugged in

This is the most depressing story I’ve seen today: a new study found that minority kids spend up to 13 hours a day on average — most of their waking hours — in front of a screen, or plugged in to some kind of media, including mobile devices, video games, TV. White kids spent four-and-a-half fewer hours plugged in, according to the study conducted by researchers at Northwestern University.

USA Today reports:

Among 8- to 18-year-olds, Asian Americans logged the most media use (13 hours, 13 minutes a day), followed by Hispanics (13 hours), blacks (12 hours, 59 minutes), and whites (8 hours, 36 minutes.)
Researchers didn’t say why, but some experts have theories.

“Children may turn to media if they feel their neighborhoods lack safe places to play or if their parents have especially demanding jobs that prevent engagement,” says Frederick Zimmerman, chair of the department of Health Services at UCLA School of Public Health.

Michael Rich, professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and director of the Center on Media and Child Health at Children’s Hospital Boston tells USA Today that screen time may also be the culprit behind the obesity epidemic among minority kids and contribute to their sleep deprivation:

Growing obesity rates among children, especially minority youth, may also correlate to the high screen time…Rich, who blogs online at Askthemediatrician.org, says he is also concerned about the content of media being viewed, and that children are losing valuable sleep hours to electronics, which can affect school performance and behavior.

I have one question on this: where are the parents?

About the author

Blogger, CommonHealth Rachel Zimmerman worked as a staff reporter for The Wall Street Journal for 10 years, most recently covering health and medicine out of the paper’s Boston bureau. Rachel has also written for The New York Times, the (now-defunct) Seattle Post-Intelligencer and the alternative newspaper Willamette Week, in Portland, Ore., among other publications. Rachel co-wrote a book about birth, published by Bantam/Random House, and spent 2008 as a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT. Rachel lives in Cambridge with her husband and two daughters. View all posts by Rachel Zimmerman →