A New Media Consumption Study shows children watch 7.5 Hours of Media per Day. That is almost as much time as adults spend at work except adults only work 5 days a week!

Kaiser Family Foundation found increased usage in online media consumption, music listening, video games, tv shows among other mediums resulting in nearly 11 hours of constant media intake. Much of the growth is contributed by the the increase in various media devices such as cell phone ownership.

The media consumption statistics are very fascinating. Tons of great info. Check it out.

“Several risks to pediatric health are literally staring children in the face. It’s time to call the doctor.”

Want to share this old, but great article from the Harvard Medical Alumni Bulletin. Very interesting points about how media cuts into many issues such as obesity, eating disorders, attention disorders, violence, sex, and drug use and how Medical Professionals need to deeply consider how much media has an influence on the development of these.

What were the Top Searches in 2009 on Yahoo & Bing?

Google still reigns the search world with 65% search share (data from comScore Oct). Yahoo currently holds shy of 19% search share though that figure is expected to rise once the Yahoo/ Microsoft deal is complete.

There isn’t much to say here, so let me just present the data released by Yahoo. Note that these are searches on Yahoo & Bing. This does not include Google.

You’ll find the data quite revealing about what our culture truly cares about.

Average American watches 153 Hours of TV & online 68 Hours per Month

A new report for the Nielsen Company reported that in September 2009, the average U.S. Internet user spent approximately 68 hours online per month. The figure may not seem all that staggering, but consider this: The average American watches 153 hours of television per month (1Q 2009)

2 Hours per day online. 3 Hours per day TV. Just between those two mediums that is 5 hours per day spent in front of a TV or a cruising the internet.

Wu Fei (吴非) maintains a blog that covers issues in contemporary education. Utilizing the movie Schindler’s List she wrote a post discussing the need to be careful in the way we expose children to the tragedies of human history.

One thing that really strikes me is the fact that Wu is very disturbed by what she sees in the Schindlers list, as well other visuals of human cruelty. In our media driven culture, we’ve lost this kind of sensitivity to violence, sex, coarse language, among other things. We are so saturated by violent movies and TV shows that a scene that once would have disgusted us and emotionally drained us, no longer has the same kind of affect.

Pornography Influence on Teens
A recent research study, conducted by Cyber Sentinel, of 1,000 teenagers showed that the average teenager spends 87 hours a year looking at porn. That is equivalent of 1 hour and 40 minutes a week browsing for pornography.
What other topics did the teenagers search for online?

31 hours a week looking at soft pornography, plastic surgery, family planning, emotional support and dieting.
1 Hour 8 Minutes on cosmetic surgery sites on procedures like breast augmentation and collagen implants.
Teens also go online to find information on pregnancy, contraceptives, sex and …

 
Media Influence on Children – Marketing Power
“The advertising and marketing industry spends over $17 billion a year on shaping our children’s identities and desires.”
Below is an excellent article discussing the influence of media and money in “commodifying” of children in our modern culture. The article itself is very long so I’ve excerpted pieces of it below with a link at the bottom to the original source. Enjoy!
As we face difficult economic times, everyone is wondering how are we going to bounce back? What can be done? In all the pain …

TV Media Consumption

When the subjects were asked to recall their media consumption behaviors, “people underestimated the amount of time they spent with TV by a substantial amount,” about 25 percent on average. – Mr. Wakshlag

Average Americans are exposed to 61 minutes of TV ads and promotions every day.
An Average Adult are exposed to some form of digital screen (TV, GPS, Cellphones, Computers) for 8.5 hours a day.
Computer usage has supplanted radio as the second most common media activity

These are some of the statistics found by the Council for Research …

Secret Life of the American Teenager
Influence of Sexual TV Programming on Teenagers
“This is the strongest evidence yet that the sexual content of television programs encourages adolescents to initiate sexual intercourse and other sexual activities. The impact of television viewing is so large that even a moderate shift in the sexual content of adolescent TV watching could have a substantial effect on their sexual behavior.”
This article discusses two new programs on ABC called “The Secret Life of the American Teenager” and “Greek”. ABC has traditionally known as a “family channel” have …

“…I wasn’t too happy with ads for erectile-dysfunction drugs popping up every 15 minutes whenever I watched a football game with my daughters in the room.” ––Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope, 2006
Common Sense Media released a study on the content of TV ads & commercials shown during NFL game broadcasts. They studyed nearly 60 games covering 180 hours of game time coverage. Within that period there were nearly 6,000 commercials and the easy conclusion was that it is impossible to watch a single game without visually taking in messages …

It’s that time of the year again. Superbowl! Though most people don’t care too much about who wins the big game, everyone wants a reason to get together and enjoy some good food and good company.
Another tradition of the Superbowl is the million dollar TV commercials in between the coverage. Advertisers spend several million dollars and pour hundreds of man hours try to capitalize on the large Superbowl viewer base. Due to the expensive nature of these TV Commercials, these TV advertisements get critiqued and scrutinized on how creative and …

The following videos are service ads shown on TV or other mediums in order to send a social message. Each of these TV spot videos are done in slow motion to enhance the message. The first video has to do with fire arms. The second video has to do with slowing down driver speeds in residential areas and the last is promoting the use of seat belts. Each of these videos use some powerful imagery to shake people into thinking about these issues.

Bullet Slow Motion Video

Disclaimer: I am going to …