ABSTRACT
The introduction of a new medium has often caused fears that it will soon displace previous media or other leisure activities, especially in the lives of children. Himmelweit, Oppenheim, and Vince (1958) assumed that “children exercise choice in how much they view, and in the way they make time for viewing. They may drop a few activities completely, reduce them all proportionately, or reduce some more than others” (p. 3). Maletzke (1959) discussed similar questions in other studies from the same period. The issue of displacement has reappeared regularly over the years in discussions of the relation between different media activities, most notably between book reading and television viewing, but also regarding the relation between media and nonmedia activities (Broddason, 1996; Hincks & Balding, 1988; Johnsson-Smaragdi, 1983, 1986, 1994). In later years it appears again in connection with the fear that the increasing importance of moving images will eventually lead to higher levels of illiteracy or to a decline in overall book reading (McLuhan, 1964; Saxer, Langenbucher, & Fritz, 1989). Today Coffey and Stipp (1997), who examined in detail whether Internet users abandon the television set and prefer to surf the Internet, discussed it again.
