Twitter? Twitcher is more like it

  Amazing to me how little media attention was paid to this; perhaps the Information Biggies quietly backed out of the room when this item came across the desk.

  But to my surprise, it was the last story of Wednesday's ABC World News Tonight [now with Diane Sawyer {and I dunno, she seems a bit too cloying to the camera for me, I think the network is going to lose some viewers}].

   But the story in question regards the screamer from a Kaiser Family Foundation study entitled "Daily media use among children and teens up dramatically from five years ago."

  Here is the summary of what they found, under the subheading — Most Youth Say They Have No Rules About How Much Time They Can Spend With TV, Video Games, or Computers.

   "With technology allowing nearly 24-hour media access as children and teens go about their daily lives, the amount of time young people spend with entertainment media has risen dramatically, especially among minority youth ... 8-18 year-olds devote an average of 7 hours and 38 minutes (7:38) to using entertainment media across a typical day (more than 53 hours a week). And because they spend so much of that time ‘media multitasking’ (using more than one medium at a time), they actually manage to pack a total of 10 hours and 45 minutes (10:45) worth of media content into those 7½ hours.

  The amount of time spent with media increased by an hour and seventeen minutes a day over the past five years, from 6:21 in 2004 to 7:38 today. And because of media multitasking, the total amount of media content consumed during that period has increased from 8:33 in 2004 to 10:45 today."

   That's TEN HOURS AND 45 MINUTES in an instantaneous, unlimited technological whirlwind of consumption: constant stimulation which doesn't allow the mind to settle on one focused, uncluttered train of thought because it's crammed into 7½ hours.

  Okay, that leaves 16½ hours left in the cycle and let's be optimistic and say the child gets 8 hours of sleep, which leaves 8½ hours.

   Eight and one-half hours a day.

   Eight and one-half hours a day that needs to include: time in a classroom (and maybe I'm wrong, but doesn't a child in an American public school spend at least five hours a day in a classroom?); time for homework; time for meals; time for bathing and going to the bathroom; time for exercise (perhaps they are running with their iPods and watching TV at the same time); time for after-school activities such as sports or music lessons, etc.; time for housework, or cutting the lawn, or reintroducing themselves to their parents.

   This should have been the lead story for every news outlet, but then again, they're part of the problem.