CBS News reports that according to a survey of 2,000 American youths, kids aged 8 to 18 spend around seven and a half hours a day, seven days a week, engaged with media. That’s more time than they spend doing anything besides sleeping — and it’s more time than adults spend working their full-time jobs.

Also, when taking into account the fact that kids often multitask when it comes to consuming media, the number’s more like a whopping 10 1/2 hours.

The study was conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Some other findings:

• The only type of media usage that has not increased is reading, though that’s mainly magazines. Book reading has actually increased over the past ten years, up to 25 minutes a day.
• Increased cell phone usage accounts for much of the increase: “Young people ages 8 to 18 spend an average of a half-hour a day talking on their cell phones, and an average of 49 minutes a day listening to, playing or watching other media on their phones. In addition, 7th- to 12th-graders spend an hour and a half a day text messaging.”
• Half of the heavy users (16 or more hours a day) reported getting poor grades in school. “Heavy users are also more likely to get into trouble, and are often sad, unhappy, or bored, according to the study.”
• Children between the ages of 11 and 14 consume the most media.
• Hispanic and African-American kids consume 13 hours on average, compared with 9 hours for white children.
• 41 percent of young people’s TV watching occurs on “time-shifted” media (i.e., TiVo) or on the computer.

In related news, a group of forward-thinking PTAs in San Francisco school districts are soliciting developers to create mobile phone apps that will remind their children to eat their broccoli, send thank-you cards to grandma and get into good colleges.

Just kidding! I made that last part up.

But come to think of it …