Reality Check: Common Sense Media Report

Common Sense Media released Children, Teens, and Entertainment Media: The View From The Classroom A Common Sense Media Research Study on November 1, 2012. The perfect foil to my optimism induced by Ericsson's The Future of Education. This report/study is particularly relevant because it is the opinions of elementary and high school teachers. This is information based on their working with our children every day.

Common Sense Media's summary of the report highlights 7 key findings.

1.  Media Use Impacts Academic Performance

(Entertainment media was defined as the TV shows, music, video games, texting, iPods, cell phone games, social networking sites, apps, computer programs, online videos, and websites students use for fun.)

71% of teachers say entertainment media has hurt kids' attention spans

58% of teachers say entertainment media (specifically texting) has impacted adversely on writing skills

almost 50% of teachers think that entertainment media keeps kids away from homework with negative effects

teachers also feel entertainment media has negatively impacted face-to-face communication and critical thinking

2. Types of Media Effecting Performance

teachers believe that elementary school students are most adversely effected by video games, television and computer games

teachers believe that for middle and high school students texting and time on social media sites effect school performance

3.  Poor Writing Skills

55% of teachers rank their students as fair or poor in writing

however, while close to a majority believe students skills have improved in math, reading and science 

4. Some Media Helping to Advance Skills

63% of teachers think media use has helped with gathering information

5. Negative Effects to Social Development

67% of teachers believe entertainment media has had a negative impact on children's sexualization (their term)

around 60% saw a negative impact regarding male/female relationships, attitudes and body image

6.  Types of Media Effecting Social Development

More than 50% overall found these types of media to be the most problematic for elementary thru high school students

Television, Music, Social networking 

7.  Positive Effects on Social Development

while the vast majority of teachers felt that entertainment media had negative effects on their students pro-social behavior,  17% felt that that social media had expanded their students horizons and brought new issues to their awareness

Conclusions from the Report

We need to help students concentrate and focus on a task; develop writing skills, develop better face-to-face communication skills and help students with time management for completing homework.

Socially, we need to scrutinize the sexual content of media for children as well as media about gender roles.

Recommendations:  We need to seek the highest quality media for kids and set time limits on engagement with all media.

Thanks to Common Sense Media for taking the time to compile this information.  Really not too many surprises, but always meaningful to hear this from the adults who spend time with our children every day.