Tear your bloodshot eyeballs from that iPad and take a good, hard look at yourselves, Mom and Dad.
Parents of teens have just as egregious a screen habit as their tech-savvy offspring, a new report from the nonprofit Common Sense Media found.
The national survey of almost 1,800 parents of kids ages 8 to 18 found parents spent on average more than nine hours a day with TVs, computers, video game consoles, e-readers, smartphones and other devices — 82% of which was “personal screen media” rather than work-related.
A 2015 study from the same organization found teens also averaged about nine hours of entertainment media use, not including time spent at school or on homework, while tweens clocked in at around six hours.
The ‘rents’ visual overstimulation was made all the more rich by the finding that more than half of them were concerned their children could grow addicted to technology — and 78% fancied themselves media-use role models for their spawn.
“These findings are fascinating because parents are using media for entertainment just as much as their kids, yet they express concerns about their kids’ media use while also believing that they are good role models for their kids,” Common Sense CEO James P. Steyer said in a statement.
Parents might instead take an example from the American Academy of Pediatrics’ recent policy statement, which recommended a one-hour cap on digital media use for kids ages 2 to 5. If you don’t indulge in any other screen time, that’s a solid episode of your favorite HBO drama.
