Victoria L.

Outerbridge

Roberts, D, Foehr, U, & Rideout, V. (2005). Generation M: Media in the Lives of 8 – 18

year-olds. Menlo Park, CA: The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.

The published research (conducted in 2004) is subsequent to a 1999 study in

response to substantial and ongoing changes in the media environment and public
perceptions that media are important in the lives of 8 – 18 year-olds. Research pertained
to media typically used including TV, VCRs, video game consoles, radio, audio CD/tape
players, movies, print media (newspapers, magazines, books), and computers (including
use of games, Internet Web sites, e-mail, and chat rooms). The survey also explored
amount of exposure, kinds of content or activities engaged, and conditions of exposure,
as well as various demographic and personal characteristics.
The household media environment (described as the type of media available, the
extent to young people have personal media, and family members’ orientation toward
media and media messages) plays a significant role in young people’s media behavior.
The amount and nature of media exposure plays a role in what youth know, believe, and
value and therefore, on how they behave. The media environment contributes in
important ways to the socialization of youth. Lack of access to a particular medium by
any particular social group may have important consequences. The report describes a
“digital divide” where inequities in personal computer access may result in limited
opportunities to develop computer literacy, go online, search the web and become fully
functioning members of the “information age.”
A typical child is likely to live in a home with three televisions, three VCRs, three
radios, three CD/tape players, two video game consoles, and a personal computer. White
youths are more likely than either African American or Hispanic youths to live in a home
with a personal computer and to be connected to the Internet. Young people whose
parents completed college are more likely than those whose parents completed no more
than high school to have in-home personal computer access. A higher proportion of kids
classified as from high-income households reported having computer related media.
The presence of multiple TV sets, computers, video game consoles, etc, likely
reduces the amount of shared media experience and parent-child interaction around
media messages. Fewer youth live in homes where an attempt is made to regulate media
behavior than live in homes where no such attempt is made. TV rules of any kind were
reported in less than half of households. TV is usually on in about half of kids’ homes,
and is on during meals in just over 60%. Although household and personal media
availability, media rules, and household TV orientation all vary substantially with socio-
demographic characteristics, those characteristics locate relative differences. Even those
socio-demographic groups that emerge as having the lowest percentage of media, or the
highest proportion of rules about use typically provide children a lot of access and very
little supervision. The amount of time young people have available to devote to media
seems to have reached some kind of ceiling, but the amount of media messages to which
they are exposed apparently has not. Media multitasking (using two or more different
media at the same time) is a phenomenon that appears to be increasing and that may have
implications for internalized mediated messages. One-quarter of the sample claims to use
multiple media simultaneously most of the time.