ABSTRACT
The media are a pervasive presence in the lives of contemporary youth. The television shows they watch, the music they listen to, the video games they play, and the websites they visit all play a considerable part in young people's lives, offering them a constant stream of different experiences, ideas, and knowledge. Developments in communications technology, moreover, have brought the media into young people's reach as never before. With the rise of digital media platforms and the growth of the Internet, the amount of time young people spend engaging with the media has risen dramatically. According to research undertaken by the Kaiser Family Foundation in 2009, the amount of time American 8- to 18-year-olds devoted to using entertainment media increased by 1 hour and 17 minutes a day over the previous 5 years, rising from 6:21 hours in 2004 to 7:38 hours. And, because young people spend so much of that time “media multitasking” (using more than one medium at a time), the total amount of media content they consumed during that period had increased from 8:33 hours in 2004 to 10:45 hours (Rideout, Foehr, & Roberts, 2010, p. 2). Mobile and online media, the study showed, had made significant inroads in young people's lives, but the “older” media of TV and film remained hugely important. Indeed, TV represented the dominant media young people consumed, youngsters viewing an average of nearly 4.5 hours daily, while on any given day about 12% of 8- to 18-year-olds watched a movie in a cinema (Rideout et al., 2010, p. 15). Elsewhere, particularly in developing societies, media access for many young people is inhibited by economic privation and limited communications infrastructures. Nevertheless, across the world, the media are a significant aspect of young people's lives. Surveying global statistics, for example, Susan Gigli (2004) concluded that average daily use of TV among school-aged children ranged from between 1.5 hours to more than 4 hours, and the prominence of TV in young people's daily lives made it one of their major information sources about the world around them. Radio, too, still plays an important role in many young people's lives, Gigli noting a particularly high number of listeners in regions such as Africa and the former Soviet Union. In analyzing the part played by such media in the lives of young people, researchers have given particular attention to both the historical development of media texts aimed at a youth audience and the possible impact of texts on young people's attitudes and behavior.
