Children, Teens, and Entertainment Media: The View From The Classroom
When we think of children today, the majority of their time is spent with some form of media. No matter where you turn, children are actively engaged in a video game, tablet, smartphone, social media, etc. Media has taken over as the number one activity that children are involved in. 

I have seen this in my own children. My children are 5,7,and 9 and they have no idea how to be bored. They are so attached to their tablets that they cry and whine if they are taken away. I have to schedule screen time for them because they would stay on the tablet the entire time. I have been lucky in that my children have screen time but they are doing very well in school. This may not be the case for all students. Have you witnessed this with children that you know? 

Common Sense Media performed a survey titled, Children, Teens, and Entertainment Media: The View From The Classroom that explores how media affects students' social and academic development as seen through a teachers' lens. The finding were a bit surprising to me being that I assumed that media would have a negative impact on academic and social development of students. The major findings include:

1. "The multitude of media options clearly offer young people both benefits and challenges. When used as educational tools in classrooms or for homework, media and technology offer exciting and important possibilities". All forms of media offer our students the opportunities to further explore the world more than any other generation. The challenge for educators is finding the balance between the two to make sure that students are using media appropriately. 

2. Students are having problems with face-to-face communication, attention spans, and writing. Students are spending so much time disengaged from others, they are not fine tuning their communication skills which they will need as they enter the workforce. 


3. "Seeking out high-quality media content for young people and setting limits on how much time is spent with media are two good places to start addressing all of these issues". This will also need to become a priority of the parents. When the students are in school, we are able to control their access but the time spent at home is crucial to their development.
As educator, we must encourage our students to interact with other mediums besides media. In order to combat the deficiencies that we are seeing, it is necessary to limit the screen time that students are getting and to monitor the media that they are accessing. There is a way to use technology to enhance education and we have to make sure that we are doing that correctly.


It is important that all teachers explore educational research. It helps teachers to remain up to date on current events related to education. The goal should be to learn as much information in order to take in back to the classroom and put it into practice. Exploring research should be a part of the position. As times change, the school environment will also change and teachers will need to be informed as much as possible. 

If you are looking for more information, take a look at the sites below:

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