Trends in Media Use

From the journal The Future of Children, a collaboration of The Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University and The Brookings Institution, this article examines how both media use and media exposure of United States (US) children vary with demographic factors such as age, race and ethnicity, and household socioeconomic status, and with psycho social variables such as academic performance and personal adjustment.


Growth in media ownership:

• Statistics on media device ownership in households with children and youth up to 17 years old indicate 99 percent of households own televisions (TVs) in 2008, with an average of 2.4 televisions per household occurring as early as 2001, and with 95 percent of those households also having video players, radio, and compact disc players/audio players.
• Personal computer ownership increased to 85 percent of homes of 8 - 18 year old young people in 2008. Fifty percent of households with younger children and 83 percent of those with older children have a video game console.
• The typical US eight- to eighteen-year-old lives in a household equipped with three TV sets, three video players, three radios, three hand-held music devices, two video game consoles, and a personal computer.
• As stated here, statistics support the finding that the presence of children and youth in a household stimulates early adoption of electronic media.
• Personal ownership by young people of media devices has increased. "In excess of 80 percent of eight- to eighteen-year-olds report having their own radio and their own CD or tape player (92 percent claim some kind of music medium); 31 percent have a computer of their own, half have a video player, and 49 percent a video game console in their room."
• Economic, ethnic, racial, and education demographics show differences in access to and use of media. "And although 93 percent of youngsters living in homes with an annual income of more than $75,000 have access to the Internet, only 29 percent of those from homes with earnings under $15,000 have Internet access. Ninety-one percent of eight- to eighteen- year-olds whose parents completed college have access to an in-home personal computer as compared with 84 percent of those whose parents attended but did not finish college and 82 percent of those whose parents completed no more than high school."
• Media exposure in 8-18 year-olds is about 8 hours per day, increasing from 3.5 hours per day for 2-7 year olds.
• "Multi-task" media use (using two or more media simultaneously) was 25 percent of media exposure time for 8-18 year-olds in 2004 and has remained relatively constant since 2004, while overall media use has increased by one hour. Girls report more concurrent media use than boys. the computer is the most frequently used "multi-tasking" tool, with visiting websites, emailing, and instant messaging listed as tasks most often done concurrently. TV is least often accessed concurrently with other media.
• As observed from data gathered by the authors, new media is not displacing the TV screen. "Not only does TV viewing consume almost triple the time given to the next closest media category, but also the next closest category consists of videos and movies — arguably simply another form of “television.” In other words, exposure to a 'TV screen' in one form or another accounts for more than half of all young people's electronic media exposure." An increase in video gaming and daily computer time seems to account for an increased media use time from 1999-2004.
• Age is a factor in how much time is available for media use by youth, and varies based upon school involvement and related activities. Some types of media use are related to age; for example, audio device use increases with age, while video game exposure is negatively related to age.
• The authors found that gender was not a factor in overall media exposure, though the type of media exposure related to both gender and age.
• The authors found that statistics on amount of media exposure related to grades appears to show that, though students achieving higher grades continue to use less media than those achieving lower grades, there is an overall media exposure increase among achieving students that has not affected grades.
• Studies show that young people who are less contented or less satisfied with various aspects of their lives have higher media exposure.
• In using sensation-seeking as a measure, the authors found that high sensation seekers reported significantly more television exposure, more use of audio media, and more total media exposure, but not more video game exposure.