America’s Real Digital Divide

America’s Real Digital Divide
In 2004, Dimitri Christakis of Seattle Children’s Hospital wrote in the medical journal Pediatrics
that “early exposure to television was associated with subsequent attentional problems.” Even when controlling for socioeconomic status, gestational age and other factors, he discovered that an increase of one standard deviation in the number of hours of television watched at age 1 “is associated with a 28 percent increase in the probability of having attentional problems at age 7.”
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If you think middle-class children are being harmed by too much screen time, just consider how much greater the damage is to minority
and disadvantaged kids, who spend much more time in front of screens.
According to NPR, “at a cost of about $12 million annually,” the state “has
yet to see any measurable increases on statewide standardized test scores.”
When politicians and policymakers talk about kids and technology, it is usually about “bridging
the digital divide,” making sure that poor kids have as much access as wealthier ones.
White children spend eight hours and 36 minutes looking at a screen every day, according to
a survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation, while black and Hispanic children spend 13 hours.
According to a 2011 study by researchers at Northwestern University, minority children watch 50 percent more TV than their white peers,
and they use computers for up to one and a half hours longer each day.