Minority youth media consumption may be hampering academic achievement

18th July 2011   ·   0 Comments

By Nadra Kareem Nittle
Contributing Writer

(America’s Wire) — Krystal Murphy received her first cell phone at age 13 and she used it solely to keep her parents in the loop about her activities. Four years later, her use of the phone has changed dramatically. Now 17, she relies on it to text friends, surf the Internet and send messages on Twitter.

“I’m on my cell all day, every day, as soon as I wake up and until I go to bed,” says the African-American teen from South Los Angeles.

According to a Northwestern University study of youth media consumption, Krystal’s habits are widespread among young people of color. Released in June, “Children, Media and Race: Media Use Among white, Black, Hispanic, and Asian American Children” found that those between ages eight and 18 use cell phones, television, computers and other electronic devices to consume an average of 13 hours of media content daily. That’s 4-1/2 hours more than their white counterparts.

The study has renewed debate about whether minority youths spend too much time on media consumption and not enough on reading and studying. While some people insist that the disparity in media consumption contributes to the education gap between minority and white youths, others cite it as a positive that can aid a child’s educational growth.

Past reports have shown a correlation between television viewing and low academic performance. A 20-year study of 678 families released in 2007 by the New York State Psychiatric Institute found that teens who watched three or more hours of television daily had an 82 percent greater chance of not graduating from high school when compared with those who watched less than an hour. However, critics of that study say students who struggle academically may be more inclined to watch TV to avoid the rigors of schoolwork.

The Northwestern study is said to be the first in the United States to examine children’s media use by race. Nearly 1,900 youths participated. The study re-analyzed data from previous Kaiser Family Foundation studies on media consumption, finding that racial differences in children’s media use remained static when accounting for socioeconomic status or whether youths came from single- or two-parent homes.

The results, which appeared to counter concerns about a possible digital divide and may give parents and educators new strategies to meet needs of minority youths, surprised Ellen Wartella, head of Northwestern’s Center on Media and Human Development. She co-authored the study.

“Recreational media use is an enormous part of young people’s lives, more than we ever thought,” she says. “It’s quite clear we have a group of young people who are tethered to their technology.”

The report finds that Black and Latino youths spend one to two more hours daily watching TV and videos, an hour more listening to music, up to 90 minutes more on computers and 90 minutes on cell phones, and 30 to 40 minutes more playing video games than white youths. During the past decade, Black youths have doubled their daily media use, and Latino youths have quadrupled theirs, according to Wartella.

Asian-American youths also consume more media than their white peers. Asians lead all groups in use of mobile devices at three hours and seven minutes daily, compared with two hours and 53 minutes for Latinos, two hours and 52 minutes for Blacks and just 80 minutes for whites. Asians also spend 14 more minutes daily watching traditional TV than do white youths and more than an hour daily than whites watching TV online, via TiVo or on DVD. Nevertheless, Asian-American youths remain high academic achievers, challenging the contention that media consumption hurts student performance.

Kerry Riley, an affiliated scholar at the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, says media can help students of color in the classroom.

“For me, the issue isn’t having more media,” says the professor of ethnic studies. “It’s access to higher standards of media.” He adds that teachers and mentors of minority youths increasingly expose them to social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook to help them learn about many issues.

Riley says he has directed students to use cell phones in class to access music videos and shown them cartoons such as “South Park” and “Family Guy.” Incorporating media in class to showcase popular culture, he says, has helped Blacks and Latinos understand how music forms and television shows can function as parodies of Western society.

“We helped them to understand these weren’t just elements of popular culture,” Riley says. “They were existential forms of social critique that related directly to their lives. So I, as an African-American professor, was able to use popular culture via Google, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook as a pedagogical tool to help educate African-American and Latino youth and increase their academic performance.”

Parents can help by monitoring how children use different forms of media and for what length of time, says Lewis of the Council of the Great City Schools. The worst thing parents can do is allow children to shut themselves in their rooms while using media because that offers no way to gauge whether critical thinking skills are being used, she says.

Wartella agrees. She says media shouldn’t function as baby- sitters but should entertain and inform youngsters, and connect them with parents.

“Parents should start talking to young people about what media they’re using and why they’re using it and try to figure out what’s going on,” she says. “It’s the way we communicate with our children.”

This article was originally published in the July 18, 2011 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper