Many of today's children spend a huge amount of their time using media. Consider the following news article:

Marcus, Mary Brophy (6/8/2011). Minority kids spend most of their waking hours plugged in. USA Today. Retrieved 7/1/2011 from http://yourlife.usatoday.com/parenting-family/story/2011/06/Minority-kids-spend-most-of-their-waking-hours-plugged-in-/48172486/1.  

Quoting from the article:

Minority children spend an average of 13 hours a day using mobile devices, computers, TVs and other media — about 4½ hours more than white kids, says a report out today.

The findings, from Northwestern University, are being presented to childhood and telecommunications experts in Washington, D.C.

The results are from an analysis of two Kaiser Family Foundation surveys that tracked media use by kids 6 to 18. Researchers analyzed that data to find out how black, Hispanic, Asian American and white youth use media for homework and for fun, and how long they're plugged in on any given day.

Among 8- to 18-year-olds, Asian Americans logged the most media use (13 hours, 13 minutes a day), followed by Hispanics (13 hours), blacks (12 hours, 59 minutes), and whites (8 hours, 36 minutes.)

I find these figures staggering—and indeed, somewhat unbelievable. A 7-day week is 168 hours. Subtract off from this 7 days of averaging 13 hours a day of media use. This leaves 77 hours. Now subtract off a minimum of 8 hours a day of sleeping. This leaves 21 hours.

Hmm. The 21 hours is available is not sufficient to cover 30 hours in school and the other things a typical child does. Evidently the figure of 13 hours a day includes a lot of multitasking, such as eating while using media, watching TV while doing text messaging, and so on. Indeed, the next to last sentence in the article indicates:

In addition, depending on the primary medium involved, as many as 47% of 8- to 18-year-olds in all groups say that "most of the time" they multi-task with another type of media.

In any event, the picture it paints is a huge change that has occurred in the lives of children growing up in our society.

This change is one of the challenges facing our educational system. The goals and teaching methodologies of formal education remain pretty much the same. The children and their world outside of school have changed immensely.

Here is a suggestion. The next time you hear someone complaining about the quality of our schools and teachers, ask them for about what their children and other children are doing with their time outside of school. Ask them what specific things they are doing to address the problem of children spending so much of their time immersed in media-based entertainment. Ask how this immersive use of media is contributing to education of children.