Pants on the Ground Jimmy Fallon as Neil Young

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If Your Kids Are Awake, They’re Probably Online

The average young American now spends practically every waking minute — except for the time in school — using a smart phone, computer, television or other electronic device, according to a new study from the Kaiser Family Foundation.

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“At night, I can text or watch something on YouTube until I fall asleep,” Francisco Sepulveda, 14, said of his smart phone.

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Those ages 8 to 18 spend more than seven and a half hours a day with such devices, compared with less than six and a half hours five years ago, when the study was last conducted. And that does not count the hour and a half that youths spend texting, or the half-hour they talk on their cellphones.

And because so many of them are multitasking — say, surfing the Internet while listening to music — they pack on average nearly 11 hours of media content into that seven and a half hours.

“I feel like my days would be boring without it,” said Francisco Sepulveda, a 14-year-old Bronx eighth grader who uses his smart phone to surf the Web, watch videos, listen to music — and send or receive about 500 texts a day.

The study’s findings shocked its authors, who had concluded in 2005 that use could not possibly grow further, and confirmed the fears of many parents whose children are constantly tethered to media devices. It found, moreover, that heavy media use is associated with several negatives, including behavior problems and lower grades.

The third in a series, the study found that young people’s media consumption grew far more in the last five years than from 1999 to 2004, as sophisticated mobile technology like iPods and smart phones brought media access into teenagers’ pockets and beds.

Dr. Michael Rich, a pediatrician at Children’s Hospital Boston who directs the Center on Media and Child Health, said that with media use so ubiquitous, it was time to stop arguing over whether it was good or bad and accept it as part of children’s environment, “like the air they breathe, the water they drink and the food they eat.”

Contrary to popular wisdom, the heaviest media users reported spending a similar amount of time exercising as the light media users. Nonetheless, other studies have established a link between screen time and obesity.

While most of the young people in the study got good grades, 47 percent of the heaviest media users — those who consumed at least 16 hours a day — had mostly C’s or lower, compared with 23 percent of those who typically consumed media three hours a day or less. The heaviest media users were also more likely than the lightest users to report that they were bored or sad, or that they got into trouble, did not get along well with their parents and were not happy at school.

The study could not say whether the media use causes problems, or, rather, whether troubled youths turn to heavy media use.

“This is a stunner,” said Donald F. Roberts, a Stanford communications professor emeritus who is one of the authors of the study. “In the second report, I remember writing a paragraph saying we’ve hit a ceiling on media use, since there just aren’t enough hours in the day to increase the time children spend on media. But now it’s up an hour.”

The report is based on a survey of more than 2,000 students in grades 3 to 12 that was conducted from October 2008 to May 2009.

On average, young people spend about two hours a day consuming media on a mobile device, the study found. They spend almost another hour on “old” content like television or music delivered through newer pathways like the Web site Hulu or iTunes. Youths now spend more time listening to or watching media on their cellphones, or playing games, than talking on them.

“I use it as my alarm clock, because it has an annoying ringtone that doesn’t stop until you turn it off,” Francisco Sepulveda said of his phone. “At night, I can text or watch something on YouTube until I fall asleep. It lets me talk on the phone and watch a video at the same time, or listen to music while I send text messages.”

Francisco’s mother, Janet Sepulveda, bought his phone, a Sidekick LX, a year ago when the computer was not working, to ensure that he had Internet access for school. But schoolwork has not been the issue.

“I’d say he uses it about 2 percent for homework and 98 percent for other stuff,” she said. “At the beginning, I would take the phone at 10 p.m. and tell him he couldn’t use it anymore. Now he knows that if he’s not complying with what I want, I can suspend his service for a week or two. That’s happened.”

The Kaiser study found that more than 7 in 10 youths have a TV in their bedroom, and about a third have a computer with Internet access in their bedroom.

“Parents never knew as much as they thought they did about what their kids are doing,” Mr. Roberts said, “but now we’ve created a world where they’re removed from us that much more.”

The study found that young people used less media in homes with rules like no television during meals or in the bedroom, or with limits on media time.

Victoria Rideout, a Kaiser vice president who is lead author of the study, said that although it has become harder for parents to control what their children do, they can still have an effect.

“I don’t think parents should feel totally disempowered,” she said. “They can still make rules, and it still makes a difference.”

In Kensington, Md., Kim Calinan let her baby son, Trey, watch Baby Einstein videos, and soon moved him on to “Dora the Explorer.”

“By the time he was 4, he had all these math and science DVDs, and he was clicking through by himself, and he learned to read and do math early,” she said. “So if we’d had the conversation then, I would have said they were great educational tools.”

But now that Trey is 9 and wild about video games, Ms. Calinan feels differently.

Last year, she sensed that video games were displacing other interests and narrowing his social interactions. After realizing that Trey did not want to sign up for any after-school activities that might cut into his game time, Ms. Calinan limited his screen time to an hour and half a day on weekends only.

So last Wednesday, Trey came home and read a book — but said he was looking forward to the weekend, when he could play his favorite video game.

Many experts believe that media use is changing youthful attitudes.

“It’s changed young people’s assumptions about how to get an answer to a question,” Mr. Roberts said. “People can put out a problem, whether it’s ‘Where’s a good bar?’ or ‘What if I’m pregnant?’ and information pours in from all kinds of sources.”

The heaviest media users, the study found, are black and Hispanic youths and “tweens,” or those ages 11 to 14.

Even during the survey, media use was changing.

“One of the hot topics today is Twitter, but when we first went into the field and began interviewing, Twitter didn’t exist,” Ms. Rideout said.

Sign in to Recommend Next Article in Education (1 of 35) » A version of this article appeared in print on January 20, 2010, on page A1 of the New York edition.

 

Confronting The Affordability Gap in Health Care Bills : NPR

Confronting The Affordability Gap in Health Care Bills

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January 19, 2010

As congressional Democrats work feverishly to bridge the gaps between the House and Senate health care overhaul bills, one issue is becoming a subject of considerable debate: affordability.

More specifically, consumer advocates, along with some House Democrats, are asking whether the average family will be able to afford the health insurance the new law would require them to have.

Ron Pollack, who runs the consumer group Families USA, says that he thinks how affordable the newly mandated insurance is will determine whether the entire health overhaul effort is a public relations success or failure.

“I think the way the American public is going to view health reform is on a personal pocketbook test,” Pollack says. “If they feel that coverage is affordable, that care is affordable, then they’re really going to be very happy with health reform.”

Illinois Democratic Rep. Jan Schakowsky says that Democrats simply cannot allow that to happen.

“As Charlie Rangel, the chairman of Ways and Means said, ‘If they can’t buy it, we can’t sell it,'” Schakowsky says “There are no words, there are no messages, that will cover up for that. And so we absolutely have to — it’s an imperative to — adjust the affordability issues.”

Schakowsky says “adjust” because there’s a big difference between how affordable insurance would be in the House bill compared to the Senate bill. The House bill has much larger subsidies to help people who earn under two-and-a-half times the poverty line — about $55,000 a year for a family of four — buy insurance.

Several religious and anti-poverty groups highlighted those differences at a meeting held last week in a crowded hearing room on Capitol Hill.

“What they decide could mean the difference between a family with a sick child paying $5,000 a year for health care or $1,800 a year,” Gloria Cooper, of the San Diego Organizing Project, told the crowd, describing the difference between what might happen under the Senate bill, which is the higher number, and the House version. “Let me tell you, to a family that is struggling to get by, the difference really means a difference.”

Among the people telling stories about being unable to afford care at the summit was a member of Congress — Rep. Donna Edwards. The Maryland Democrat described how, 17 years ago, she was a young mother without health insurance when she slipped and fell in the produce section of the grocery store. She was taken by ambulance to the local hospital.

“They didn’t say, ‘Do you have health care insurance?’ They didn’t say, ‘Where’s your card?’ They treated me,” she recalled. “And it cost me thousands of dollars, nearly bankrupt me, put me in debt, just like millions of Americans across this country. Affordability is accessibility.”

House members have been agitating for the Senate to adopt their more generous subsidy structure. They say that’s more important than ever because the final bill is almost certain to drop the House-passed government-sponsored public option. That was supposed to be one way to put pressure on insurance companies to keep premiums low.

But Pollack of Families USA says that unlike some other differences between the bills, getting the Senate to do something about the affordability issue probably won’t be all that difficult.

“There’s no question that the House leadership wants to make this a top priority and have the Senate move closer to the House provisions,” Pollack says. “But I have to tell you, I think that the leaders in the Senate, they too want to improve affordability. And the White House wants to see this improved. So, I believe from all three key sources — the House, the Senate, the White House — this is going to be a top priority.”

Of course, making the bill more generous for those with moderate incomes will boost the measure’s bottom line cost. And that means negotiators will have to raise that money somewhere else, which could set off a whole round of other complications.

 

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