The Teen Media Juggling Act

THE TEEN MEDIA JUGGLING ACT
[SOURCE: Kaiser Family Foundation]
In recent years, the issue of media multitasking has sparked a broad discussion about the potential impact on children and youth and has raised concerns among non-profits about how best to engage young people with social marketing campaigns. To help advance understanding about the issues that surround media multitasking, the Kaiser Family Foundation hosted a forum, The Teen Media Juggling Act: The Implications of Media Multitasking Among American Youth. Kaiser also released a report, Media Multitasking Among American Youth: Prevalence, Predictors and Pairings. key findings include: 1) When they are a young person’s primary activity, TV and videogames are the least multitasked media, while reading and computer activities such as instant messaging, computer games and looking at websites are the most multitasked. 2) Most young people media multitask at least some of the time, but some don't do so at all. 3) Young people are most likely to use multiple media together when they’re instant messaging (74%), surfing the Internet (74%) or playing computer games (67%); they’re least likely to do so when watching TV (17% of the time). 4) Girls are more likely to media multitask than boys. 5) Young people who are “heavy” media multitaskers consume nearly twice as much media as those who are “light” multitaskers. 6) Many teens use media while doing their homework, especially if they’re doing homework on the computer.
http://www.kff.org/entmedia/entmedia121206pkg.cfm