Face it. We’re saturated with media.

Yesterday when I got up, the first sound I heard was the music oozing from my girls’ iPods through their docking stations. Moments later, as my 15-year-old daughter Alyssa came downstairs to breakfast, she was texting a friend about homework. Meanwhile, my 13-year-old Ashley quickly jumped online to check the weather. Five minutes later, we were in the car and Ashley routinely plugged her iPod into the car’s system so we could all benefit from hearing her music on the way to school.

I’ve read all the reports about media saturation. Our family doesn’t leave the TV on, my kids don’t have Internet connections in their room, and I’m very proactive about monitoring our home’s level of media saturation. But the fact remains, it was only 7:32 a.m.… and we were already soaked.

Just how media saturated is the average home in America?
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93% of teenagers 12-17 are online—the largest percentage of any age group.
Only 8% of families with teens have no computer, and only 4% of homes with computers don’t have access to Internet.
80% of teens 12-17 own a game console.
75% of all teens have a cell phone.
A typical teen sends about 50 texts per day.
Most teen cell phone users make 1-5 calls per day.
31% of teens who take their phones to school send text messages every day during class time.
73% of teens are on social Internet sites (like Facebook).
Only 8% of teens use Twitter (compared to 37% of 18-24 year-olds—the largest percentage of any age group).
14% of teens now blog, compared to 28% in 2006.
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Today’s children and young people have