Children and teens are spending an increasing amount of time using "new" media like computers, the Internet, and video games — without cutting back on the amount of time they spend with "old" media like television, print, and music, a new study from Kaiser Family Foundation finds.

The study, Generation M: Media in the Lives of 8- to 18-Year-olds, examined media use among a nationally representative sample of more than two thousand third- through twelfth-graders, including nearly seven hundred self-selected participants. According to the report, because youths oftens use more than one medium at a time — online while watching TV — they're managing to pack increasing amounts of media content into the same amount of time each day.

The study, which measured recreational (non-school) use of TV and videos, music, video games, computers, movies, and print, found that the total amount of media content young people are exposed to each day has increased by more than an hour over the past five years (from 7:29 to 8:33), with most of the increase coming from video games (up from 0:26 to 0:49) and computers (up from 0:27 to 1:02, excluding school work). The study also found that the amount of time young people spend media multi-tasking has increased from 16 percent to 26 percent of the time they spend with media, while the actual number of hours devoted to media use has remained steady at just under 6.5 hours a day, or 44.5 hours a week.

"Kids are multi-tasking and consuming many different kinds of media all at once," said foundation president and CEO Drew Altman. "Multi-tasking is a growing phenomenon in media use and we don't know whether it's good or bad or both."