Save the Planet - Chase Your Kids Outside
I was listening to the radio today when I heard a comment about kids who spend a lot of time playing outside having better eye sight. This may have something to do with the kids not being in front of computer screens, TVs or video games. That got me thinking about how much energy kids collectively use when on the computer, playing video games and watching TV.
There are several pieces to this. CNN reported that children aged 6 and under spend an average of two hours a day playing video games, using computers, and watching TV and videos. Science Daily reported that people from the age of 18 to 23 spend an average of 12 hours a week on the computer. This same report talked about how kids and young adults are spending much time doing physical activity.
Say your desktop runs at an average of 125 watts per hour when in use, which is toward the lower-middle end for Dell desktops. Lets also assume that it costs $0.007 per kilowatt hour for electricity, which is about what I pay in Austin. The formula to figure out your cost per hour is this: watts times hours of use, divided by 1000, times cost per kilowatt hour. An hours of use costs $0.01125 in this example. That is just a little over a penny per hour. Say the average kid (who is not playing outside) spends 2 hours a day on a computer. U.S. census data from 2000 shows that there were almost 174,000 kids in Austin from the ages of 5 to19. Using a figure of 225,000 (my guess for 2008), if you do the math, you will see that if these kids spend an average of 2 hours a day on a computer, the cost for the electricity using this these figures and this cost formula will be over $3937per day. That comes to over $1.4 million per year and that is just Austin. How many kids are in the world who spend an average of 2 hours a day on a computer? And don't forget that computers give off heat and that heat will run up air conditioning bills a little.
So how about hand-held games - can you say batteries? Disposable batteries end up in landfills. Rechargeable batteries suck more electricity from the grid. How about televisions? The probably cost less to run than a PC, but they are a factor.
OK, I've talked about how the world can save tons of energy by having the kids play outside rather than on computers, but there are other befits besides energy consumption. How about getting out kids to be healthier? When I was a kid, we practically lived outside. There weren't a lot of fat kids when I was young. Today, most kids are not in great shape and don't have much in the way of physical skills. When I subbed in the Lake Travis ISD schools, the lack of physical activity was very evedent when subbing in gym class. I could hardly believe how uncoordinated most kids were. Most were terrible at throwing, catching and kicking a ball. The simple reason may be because the body parts that get the most physical work these days are the kid's two thumbs.
I have a feeling that a few environmentalists may be torn if they read this. Sure, kids using less electricity and fewer batteries would be a great thing. But if they play outside, they would convert a lot more oxygen into carbon dioxide. Oh, the problems and choices we face.
Seriously though, there are a lot of very small changes we can all make that will save energy and help out our environment and I've just touched on a couple. By the way, leaving a computer on for the rest of the day sucks up energy too, so turn it off or put it to sleep.