WEDNESDAY, June 8, 2011 (HealthDay News) -- Black and other minority children in the United States spend far more time than white children watching TV and videos, listening to music, using computers and playing video games, new research shows.
Northwestern University researchers analyzed the results of previous media use studies done by the Kaiser Family Foundation and found that minority youth, 8 to 18 years old, consume an average of 13 hours of media content a day, about 4.5 hours more than white youth.
Minority youth spend one to two more hours a day than white youth watching TV and videos, about an hour more listening to music, as much as 90 minutes more on computers and 30 to 40 minutes more playing video games, the researchers found.
Among the specific findings:
"In the past decade, the gap between minority and white youth's daily media use has doubled for blacks and quadrupled for Hispanics," the study's director, Ellen Wartella, who heads Northwestern's Center on Media and Human Development, said in a university news release. "The big question is what these disparities mean for our children's health and education."
The study was scheduled to be presented Wednesday in Washington, D.C., at the Lambert Family Communication Conference on Children, Media and Race. Experts note that research presented at meetings should be considered preliminary because it has not been subjected to the rigorous scrutiny given to research published in peer-reviewed journals.
More information
The Nemours Foundation explains how TV affects children.