“Kids spend more time with screens today than they do with any other activity, including sleeping."
Eric E. Rasmussen (BA ’02, MA ’04) should have seen it coming. As a professor at Texas Tech, Rasmussen researches media’s impact on children. Even so, the father of four energetic girls wasn’t prepared for the transformation that came over one daughter when she turned 13 and got her first cell phone. “Our world turned upside down,” he recalls. When she wasn’t texting, calling, playing games, watching YouTube, or scrolling, she often grew restless and irritable.
Sound familiar? Because technology is so pervasive, it impacts every family—and especially children. “Kids spend more time with screens today than they do with any other activity, including sleeping,” says Rasmussen, who wrote the book Media Maze: Unconventional Wisdom for Guiding Children Through Media. “It’s almost 11 hours every day.” So much screen time means kids face new challenges in managing media, including challenges with identity formation and pornography.
Read Rasmussen's full story at BYU Magazine.
Full Name: Eric E. Rasmussen
Grad Year: BA 2002, MA 2004
College: Fine Arts and Communications
Major: Communications
Post date: February 21, 2018
Author: Madeline Buhman