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Today’s popular educational buzzwords are interactive learning and media multitasking. They were coined to describe the growing trend of students who use multiple forms of technology in the learning process. They also denote a tendency for students to engage in many activities while they complete assignments. At the heart of the hype, it appears that we have a group of students who are ultimately becoming too distracted to learn.

The Kaiser Family Foundation recently conducted a study that proved kids have access to more media than they can handle. According to the findings of Generation M: Media in the Lives of 8-18 Year-old, the amount of time young people spend “media multi-tasking” has increased from 16 percent to 26 percent of media time in the last five years.

“Kids are multi-tasking and consuming different kinds of media all at once,” said Drew Altman, Ph.D., President and CEO of Kaiser Family Foundation. “Multi-tasking is a growing phenomenon in media use and we don’t know whether it’s good or bad or both.”

Most teachers and high school counselors would lean toward it being a bad thing if left unmonitored. One reason media use goes unmonitored is the unlimited access students have to various media in their bedrooms. The study shows that 68 percent of all 8-18 year-olds have television sets in their bedroom and more than half have a video game player connected. There has also been an increase in the number of students with VCR or DVD players (54 percent), cable or satellite TV (37 percent), computers (31 percent) and internet access (20 percent) in their bedrooms. When all is said and done, students spend at least six hours a day devoted to media use.

“These kids are spending the equivalent of a full-time work week using media, plus overtime,” said Vicky Rideout, the Kaiser Family Foundation Vice President who directed the study.

This excessive amount of time spent using media has to be interfering with work. While the study found that the only students who reported unsatisfactory grades were those who tended to devote more time to playing video games than using other media forms, it doesn’t negate that excessive distractions interfere with homework.

Teachers will attest to the inability of students to critically read a literature passage for homework while trying to instant message friends or talk on the phone. It is difficult to give full attention to math homework while music videos are blaring in the background.

The findings of the study might not be immediate cause for alarm, but “anything that takes up that much space in their [young people’s] lives certainly deserves our full attention,” said Rideout.