There was a time, from the 1960s through earlier in this century, when television was considered a tremendous waste of time for Americans who should have been reading, working or exercising. Many surveys showed that Americans watched as much as six hours a day on average. The TV is no longer the way that Americans waste time. The baton has been passed to the internet.
New Pew research reports that:
Americans are increasingly going online just for fun and to pass the time, particularly young adults under 30. On any given day, 53% of all the young adults ages 18 – 29 go online for no particular reason except to have fun or to pass the time.
The trend is not restricted to the young. Some 58% of all adults say they use the internet as a diversion.
Clearly, time spent on idle, directionless activity is time not spent on constructive endeavors. One school of thought, which goes back to the start of video media, suggests that such media soften the mind and ruin the capacity for productivity. Some analysts have pointed out that nations with the best education attainment numbers are those in which people have little access to TV. It is impossible to tell, but idle use of the internet probably is discouraged strongly in those countries as well. Chinese children cannot be better educated than their American counterparts if they spend hour after hour surfing the web.
The sad thing about the Pew report is that it offers no solution to the idleness of Americans, particularly young ones, who do not spend their online time primarily at news or education sites. Pew says nothing because there is no solution. The government will not mandate that internet use be curtailed. The Pew data show that parents are not discouraging the habit either.
Americans have become dumber as the years have passed, based on school scores and figures about literacy. As long as the youngest people in the U.S. have online access, whether via PC or smartphone, that will not change. And that access actually will grow, rather than shrink, as the number or devices linked to broadband expands.
Douglas A. McIntyre
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