Whetstone High School senior Rachel Renick, 18, left, listens to her iPod while working on homework with classmate Caroline Block-Wilkins, 17, who's also writing a text message, at Caribou Coffee in Clintonville.
It appears today's young people really do have full-time jobs: using their cell phones, computers, iPods, TVs and other electronic devices.
Youths from 8 to 18 years old spend about 7 1/2 hours a day -- and more than 53 hours a week, because they don't take weekends off -- using electronic gadgets, according to a new Kaiser Family Foundation study.
That's about an hour more than children spent tethered to media devices five years ago, when the study was last done. And it doesn't include the 1 1/2 hours a day youths typically spend texting or the half-hour they chat on their cell phones.
If you add that in, then figure that kids multitask -- often surfing the Web while watching TV, for example -- they actually pack an average of nearly 13 hours of media content into each day.
"When children are spending this much time doing anything, we need to understand how it's affecting them, for good and bad," said Drew Altman, president and chief executive officer of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonprofit group based in Menlo Park, Calif., that focuses on health-care issues.
The only people who didn't seem surprised by the results -- or think that 7 1/2 hours was extreme -- were the tweens and teens themselves.
"It's our world," said Caroline Block-Wilkins, a 17-year-old senior at Whetstone High School.
She and a friend were at Caribou Coffee in Clintonville after school yesterday, working on class reports on their laptops while checking Facebook, listening to their iPods and texting friends on their cell phones.
"If anything, it has given me more access to information," said Rachel Renick, an 18-year-old senior at Whetstone. "I probably procrastinate more, but it doesn't affect my schoolwork or grades."
But many parents and researchers worry about the effects of overexposure.
Although most of the youngsters in the study got good grades, nearly half of the heaviest users -- those who consume more than 16 hours a day -- reported lower grades and diminished feelings of personal contentment.
It's like any other addiction, said Christine Suniti Bhat, an assistant counseling professor at Ohio University.
"The more users get hooked on electronic devices, the more they want it," Bhat said.
She said that "depression and anxiety have been linked to excessive use of electronic devices."
Others say technology is here to stay, and what's important is not whether it is good or bad but how it is being used, especially by children.
"Kids view it as much of a necessity as the air they breathe and water they drink," said Dr. Michael Rich, a pediatrician who directs the Center on Media and Child Health at Children's Hospital in Boston.
He said a teen can sit at a computer and use that time to set up a Web site to raise money for Darfur or play a violent video game.
Rich warned that research has proved that kids who spend at least five hours in front of a computer or TV are dramatically more likely to be overweight. He encourages parents to limit their children's "screen" time to no more than two hours a day.
Youths whose parents set limits on the use of technology consume nearly three hours less than those who don't, the study found.
Some educators worry that students today don't get enough face-to-face interaction and are more likely to be rude while on the phone or texting -- to the point of even bullying, in some cases -- because they can't see the emotional effect of their words on someone's face.
But many said that being technologically savvy will help kids succeed in school, work and life.
"The world of the future is definitely going to be digital," said Ralph King, activities director at Worthington Kilbourne High School.
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