I would think that this number would actually be higher than 'nearly' half. They are at school all day with laptops, and then I would imagine they go home and do homework, watch videos, and communicate with friends all using a screen. The only time away from screens is showering or playing a sport.
For me, I would guess that I spend 13 hours a day looking at a screen. I think that's just modern life for a lot of people, especially those who work in tech.
I don't know any high schools that allow laptops in normal classes.
This is in the tri-state area at least (NJ/NY/PA) where I know a bunch of people who are teachers. Maybe the rest of the country it's common for high school students to be allowed laptops in class?
Some districts in NJ have a 1 to 1 policy where students are all given a chromebooks at the start of the year. Teachers who can utilize this policy and google classroom love it because it off-loads the grading to a program and not a piece of paper.
In north Chicago suburbs, my 1st grader gets an iPad, and my 3rd and 5th graders have chromebooks. All communication is through school apps, and much of the work is done on those. They use them for homework, and spend much of the day on them. I hate it.
In the same area, both my hometown and the district I attended had 1:1 Chromebook policies. They also had Orwelian programs to allow teachers to see what was on student's screens (!) and later a list of recently closed tabs (!!).
I think as a child your mind is pretty easily distracted ( looking at you IT classes of my time where 90% + of the class would be sneaking on miniclip every time a teachers back was turned )
It's pretty essential if we're going to have those connected devices in the classroom there is a way to control it.
I would prefer rigorous blocking over teacher control - but reasonably I think it's kind of necessity in a classroom setting.
I have 3 kids in middle and high school in West Windsor NJ. The school gives each student a chromebook or you can bring your own (I believe BYOD that is only allowed in high school).. everything is done through google classroom + printed handouts....
I'm in the same area, my kids don't have their own laptops or chomebooks for use in class. There are a half dozen desktop computers in the classroom and students rotate using them for some educational games, but the normal work is not computer-mediated.
Really? Around here (rural Minnesota, in a rural school district), probably 80% of schoolwork is done on a Chromebook, at least in the final years of high school. I'm amazed by how much lighter my kid's backpack got in 11th grade.
The article mentions that the 7.5 hours a day specifically excludes time spent at school or doing homework.
So, you're absolutely correct that the figure is much higher, and the rest of the article shares potential health and social risks that children (instead of adults) have when they are so plugged in, "modern life" aside. I believe, however, that children are more vulnerable to these risks than us who work in tech all day.
Actually here in Finland a lot of schools are moving towards laptops/tablets/etc. Kids as young as 9-10 are expected to use those devices. Books and materials are provided through online portals and downloaded locally on the machines. A lot of homework is done and returned online. Along with exams, essays and all kinds of other nonsense.
As you get older most exams are done on Linux distro called DigabiOS (https://github.com/digabi/digabi-os) the same distro is also used for the matriculation exams. You boot this off of a USB drive and hope it works well with your own machine.
So I can absolutely see people spending most of their school day on a computer staring at a screen.
I recently rewatched Neon Genesis Evangelion and noticed that in many of the classroom scenes all of the kids had laptops. The anime aired in 1995/1996, but was set in 2015.
Although there's a difference between spending time on a screen for school vs. social media/youtube/video games/etc. I don't think the mere fact of being in front of a screen is the determining factor here, but rather the nature of the content. We would, for example, look very differently at two kids, one who read only for enjoyment and one who read mostly for scholastic reasons.
I agree, but also there's no way spending a childhood mostly sitting and staring into a light panel 18 inches away from your face is ideal.
As a tech worker I use screens more than them, but I am at least paid OK for destroying my body and can evaluate the trade-offs and adjust my life if needed.
Yeah - optometry issues are literally the only time such a metric makes sense and even then it may have issues from conflating differing screen types, brightnesses, and distances.
> Those figures don’t even factor in the time kids are using screens for school or homework, where smartboards and school computers are likely a part of many classroom settings.
For me, I would guess that I spend 13 hours a day looking at a screen. I think that's just modern life for a lot of people, especially those who work in tech.