Have Your Kid Read This Item As She Watches TV And Uses The Computer

Gloomy researchers often tell us that American schoolkids are less capable in math and reading than their peers in 97 countries and several other planets. OK, but are kids in those places adept at simultaneously using computers, listening to music, watching TV, talking on the phone and playing video games? When it comes to media multitasking, young Americans have no peer.

A Kaiser Family Foundation survey of kids age 8-18 finds that “the total amount of media content young people are exposed to each day has increased by more than an hour over the past five years”—from 7 hours 29 minutes to 8 hours 33 minutes.