Future:Media:Change

A study from the Kaiser Family Foundation reveals that children and teens are spending a fairly dramatic amount of time using entertainment media per day.  If your nonprofit millennial ready?

The report, which was released Wednesday, showed that 8- to 18-year-olds “devote an average of 7 hours and 38 minutes to using entertainment media across a typical day.” That adds up to more than 53 hours a week. And thanks to multitasking, they wind up packing in nearly 10 hours and 45 minutes of content during those seven and a half hours. -CNET

Let’s look at some of the key statistics that are important for us:

• The only media use that declined was reading printed newspapers and magazines
• Seventh to 12th graders spend a whopping 1 hour and 35 minutes texting for an average of 118 messages a day
• Two-thirds of 8- to 18-year-olds have a cell phone, which is up from 39 percent five years ago.
• Social networking was the most popular computer use accounting for an average of 22 minutes a day.

Putting this in perspective, if you have a growth strategy that is looking to cultivate the next generation of donors, it better have a new media strategy.  I’ll write more about Generation Y and their impact on the NonProfit industry in a following post.