Bored to Death? How We Consume Media

By Eric Metaxas
May 25, 2012

By most estimates, South Korea is the most-wired society in the world. South Koreans "enjoy" virtually universal internet access at speeds and prices that Americans can only dream about.

But that access comes at a high price: By official government estimates, nearly two million South Koreans can be described as "internet addicts."

Now, the words "addict" and "addiction" get thrown around a lot in contemporary culture, but what would you call the following: a Korean couple repeatedly leaves their apartment and goes to an internet café where they spend all night playing an internet game. One night they return to find their three-month-old daughter dead from malnutrition and dehydration.

This actually happened in Seoul. While it's the most extreme case, the difference is one of degree, not kind. An episode of PBS' "Frontline" showed South Korean kids at government-sponsored rehab centers trying, mostly in vain, to wean themselves from their dependence on the internet.

There are several lessons we can learn from the South Korean experience, but I will settle for just one: We would be wrong to believe that media is inherently value-neutral and that any harm stems from the way it is used. the rest

The average American kid crams nearly 11 hours of media into 7.5 hours in front of screens: Consuming multiple media streams at the same time is becoming the rule rather than the exception.