The Poor Waste More Time On Digital Entertainment [Slashdot]

[DP ServBot]

New submitter polyphydont writes "Children of parents with low social status are less able to resist the temptations of technological entertainment, a fact that impedes their education and adds to the obstacles such children face in obtaining financial comfort later in life. As explained in the article, poor parents and their children often waste both their time and money on heavily marketed entertainment systems. Such families often accumulate PCs, gaming consoles and smart phones, but use them only for nonconstructive activities."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

[Gameguy]

What exactly would be a constructive activity to use a PC, gaming console, or smart phone for?

I'm not really surprised by this article, it's usually cheaper to stay at home than to go out and do other things. Entertainment isn't exactly free and the poor wouldn't be able to afford going out all the time.

[starchildskiss78]

Are they trying to say that Super Runabout San Francisco Edition for the Dreamcast lied to us?

One of the scenarios you have to pick is clearly titled "The Poor Have No Leisure."

What an interesting development....

[Aussie2B]

Well, yeah, if you're poor, it's pretty hard to go horseback riding or see the opera. This article/study smacks of classism. It gives the impression that the poor are lazy, so that's why they're poor. Or that the rich have more drive or willpower to educate themselves. What a bunch of baloney.

[skaar]

I always used my Super Nintendo for constructive activities.

[understatement]

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/30/us...pagewanted=all

The study found that children of parents who do not have a college degree spend 11.5 hours each day exposed to media from a variety of sources, including television, computer and other gadgets. That is an increase of 4 hours and 40 minutes per day since 1999.

Children of more educated parents, generally understood as a proxy for higher socioeconomic status, also largely use their devices for entertainment. In families in which a parent has a college education or an advanced degree, Kaiser found, children use 10 hours of multimedia a day, a 3.5-hour jump since 1999. (Kaiser double counts time spent multitasking. If a child spends an hour simultaneously watching TV and surfing the Internet, the researchers counted two hours.)

So there’s only a 1.5 hour difference in time wasting between low income and well off families? Well damn, can’t argue with that, the poor are wasting more time than the rich.

[Aussie2B]

The rich have an unfair advantage, the rest of us schmucks couldn't afford the Miracle Piano Teaching System and the Exertainment Lifecycle. But at least we could afford Mario Paint, which prepared us for our slovenly lives as bug exterminators.

[shopkins]

I also really don't understand, and the article doesn't make it clear, what a "productive" use of technology is by the standards of this study. Math Blaster? Also, there is some subtle classicism and maybe even racism in the article. As a former reporter I can say that when someone goes out of their way to insert a lukewarm positive description like "thoughtful" into a paragraph introducing someone, it's often because they have a low personal opinion of that particular person and are over-compensating by trying to say something, anything nice.