Oh, lookit! A thought!

So, a friend pointed me to this article http://www.marketingvox.com/kids-online-time-jumps-63-in-5-years-044616/

To which I said so? Big whoop. If I read it correctly they are talking about a jump from 7 hours to 11 hours PER MONTH. I shall wait for the oxygen to refill the room after the collective gasps hoovered it up... Right. And the stat 65%... ok. Um, for a headline it's sensational, but what is it really? Is that a number to really be alarmed about? Or should we be concerned that the average kid spends 1600 minutes a week watching TV vs 3.5 minutes of meaningful interaction with their parents? (I'll cite that as soon as I find the article, it's at work) 3.8 hours a day of TV vs .5 minutes of substantive interaction with parents...

Not Five minutes... POINT 5 minutes otherwise known as 30 seconds. Holy CRAP! I feel like I ought to apologize to my kids for bothering them so freakin much. Ya know, actually asking them how their day went and l i s t e n i n g. Sure, maybe it's because I'm a counselor... or maybe I'm a counselor because of it.

See that's where the whole "Internet use up 65%" alarmism is so damned misleading. It's meaningless! Is it because schools are encouraging kids to do research online? Isn't that a valid and good reason to do something? Maybe it's because they are chatting with their friends and don't have cell phones to txt their little minds into oblivion? Oh, heavens! Not internet chat! Worry worry worry! Good god, maybe the parents ought to be more involved and thereby lessen their childrens' exposure to unknown elements beyond their control. But if the kids aren't chatting/playing games online/being social at a distance, parents better not groan when the kids say A) "I'm bored", B) "There's nothing to do, or C) "Would you drive me to (where ever) or "Can (whoever) come over?"

And besides 7 hours to 11 hours a month. Who's kids are these? Mine must be screwing up the curve something FIERCE. 30 days in a month = 720 hours. So previously kids were on line about 1% of the time. Now... 1.5% of the time. Hmmm, THAT's a statistic that seems meaningful. Why? Not just because I came up with it, but because it has context. There's more than just numbers. There's a sense of how much of a month that ends up being. It's like... 15 minutes a day up to 25 minutes? Or so. My math is sketchy.

Bah. I've spend more time being bemused by this that your average kid ages 2 to 11 spends on the net.