The Real World is Memorex

Peter Gunz isn’t the only one that got ‘em hooked like dope.  It’s not new news, but it also isn’t pretty; the New York Times reports that research has updated previous findings of how much time America’s youths spend on their media devices.  Americans “ages 8 to 18 spend more than seven and a half hours a day” on devices such as smartphones, computers and other miscellaneous devices – up more than an hour from just five years ago when researchers had believed a ceiling had been reached, given the time restraints in a day.  Discounting the hours spent in school and factoring in the couple of hours spent texting and talking, it’s no wonder that there is such a demand for longer battery lives and chargers are constantly plugged in.  Actually, more time is spent watching videos, playing games and browsing online on phones than talking on them.

When we were that age, we had pagers and a Walkman.  We didn’t watch YouTube on our phones, we watched Saved By The Bell on cable boxes that didn’t tell us which channels were what stations.  Phones used to be shared by households.  Now, they’re kept close to the vest like pacemakers.  Electronic devices these days are so convenient that they’re inconvenient to be without – it’s no wonder that kids who can’t drive are hooked on these things.

The article states that “contrary to popular wisdom, the heaviest media users reported spending a similar amount of time exercising as the light media users.”  However, we’d be hard-pressed to find people exercising without an iPod or even their cellphones – we’ve all had to endure listening to other people’s conversations while they’re on the stair stepper.  We’ll leave the Bluetooth headset issue alone for now, but you should already know that they’re mad corny.

With a generation of kids so tethered to their devices, why should we even bother talking about and waiting for the day we have robots?