Media in the lives of 8-18 year olds

It is interesting reading the results from this study not because I wasn't expecting this to be the case but how certain results were split so drastically by racial lines and personal feelings and grades correlated to media use by the students. With technology moving forward so quickly and more groundbreaking devices being created everyday to increase the ease of media absorbption the only possible result would be an increse in how much media these kids would take in. I like how they noted that students would often take in almost 10 hours of media in the time span of 7.5 hours because they were often streaming this information from several sources. I also think back to when I was this age and honestly could never imagine anything like this in my time because I was still using a typewriter to type papers for class had no cell phone let alone one that streamed media, and we had one television in the whole house. Looking at how much they have advanced this technology in such a short time and how students are cramming more and more media into less and less time I am curious what the results of a similar study like this will be in 15 years from now.
The part where students personal feelings were directly related to the amount of internet usage is what was interesting. Students who have heavy internet use have lower grades and personal content. I could see how this is the case because the students who spend all their time using this technology even social networking sites are missing out on the personal interactions and social experiences that light users may make more use of. Even though you can reach people through technology its just not the same result as actually spending that time with a group of peers which is what I feel may be the cause of their lower level on contentment. As far as lower grades again technology can be a great tool in helping further students in their learning but when it was breaking down how the participants used media it was mostly in watching televison, listening to music, and not as much in the pursuit of academic knowledge. These students pushed aside valuable study time to have more time using their media devices which can easily be seen as a reason for poor grades. As well as personal contentment and grades they also mentioned that the amount of time spent using media drastically differed depending on the racial background of the child. While there are probably a lot of differing views on why this is the case I think this is one of the more important results to look at from this study and a reason that I am going to read the remainder of this article. I feel getting a better grasp on this as well as lowered personal contentment and grades would help any teacher or parent learn some valuable lessons and help them be more prepared for dealing with people in this age range.