A University of Alabama at Birmingham study found adolescents ages 14-15 are engaged in media more than 23 total hours daily.“It’s just crazy,” says Aaron Davis, doctoral candidate in the Department of Psychology and author of the poster. “I knew that media use was significant in their lives but I didn’t realize how consuming it was for them and that is concerning especially when you consider all they have access to online.”
The study, part of a larger study on adolescents and sleep deprivation, surveyed 55 Birmingham area adolescents and their parents regarding media use. Fifty-eight percent of the teens were female, and 53 percent were African-American. The adolescents were an average age of 14.89 years. The media hours were calculated independently so if they were talking on the cell phone for one hour while simultaneously watching television that counted as two hours.
