Parents face a new frontier: Setting electronic limits

According to a study released this week by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, it's a task that is becoming increasingly hard for parents: Children from 8 to 18 spend 7.5 hours a day engaged with some type of media, up from 6.5 five years ago. And thanks to the wonders of multitasking -- the ability to watch TV while listening to their iPods, say, or e-mail while watching YouTube -- into that period of time they actually manage to pack almost eleven hours of screen time. The upshot is that on average, children spend more time each week consuming media -- about 53 hours -- than their parents spend at work.

"Use of every type of media has increased over the past 10 years," with the exception of print reading, which has decreased, the study notes, pointing out that children who are heavy media users tend to have worse grades and be less content. The study also found that parents who put the brakes on screen time have an impact: "Children whose parents make an effort to limit media use -- through the media environment they create in the home and the rules they set -- spend less time with media than their peers." This presents quite a challenge: Many parents want their children to have some Internet facility, so the question becomes where to draw the line. "I spend my entire day in front of a screen," says Michael Agger, who writes about online media for Slate and is the father of a 4-year-old boy who has started to play games on dad's iPhone. "Part of me thinks, 'Well, it can't hurt to be computer literate, since he will be manipulating one of these things for the rest of his life." On the other hand, says Agger, "I'm also one of those tiresome reading snobs."