Page 604 - Battleground The Media Volume 1 and 2

Youth and Med a Use |

technology environment they live in has resulted in more choices, and a greater
degree of relevancy among those choices.
The Kaiser Family Foundation’s Generation: M study characterized young
people’s media environments in 1999 as “media rich.” In 2004, an update on the
original study saw dramatic changes, so much so that they decided to change the
term to “media saturated.” The study showed that in 2004, 99 percent of Ameri-
can youth had at least one television; 97 percent had their own VCR; 34 per-
cent had their own digital recording device; 86 percent had their own computer;
12 percent had their own laptop; 13 percent had their own handheld Internet
device; 74 percent had access to the Internet; and 49 percent had high-speed
connections in their home. While many young people’s homes do not reflect
this “media-saturated” picture, the primary socioeconomic-related differences
appear for computers, Internet connections, and Internet-based programs. This
being said, previous young generations could not have foreseen such a world.
Young people are taking advantage of this new climate to great lengths. No-
where is this seen more than with Internet usage. The Pew Internet and Ameri-
can Life project provides the most comprehensive data on the role of Internet
use. According to the study, there are many reasons to believe that today’s youth
have the biggest impact on digital communication technology. Internet users
aged 12 to 28 years old have embraced the online applications that enable com-
municative, creative, and social uses. Eighty-seven percent of 12- to 17-year-olds
are actively online, the most prominent of any age group. When online, they
are looking for interactive media. Sixty-six percent of online 12- to 17-year-olds
have downloaded audio files; 31 percent of online teens actively download vid-
eos. In addition to simply connecting to the Internet, over half of online youth
are active “content creators,” as they “create a personal webpage; create a web-
page for school, a friend, or an organization; share original content they created
themselves online; or remix content found online into a new creation.” One-
third of online teens report sharing their own artwork, photos, stories, or vid-
eos with others via the Internet. It must be noted that the picture of youth and
the Internet is not entirely positive. There have been a number of cases where
the convenience and super-fast speed of communication allowed by the Inter-
net have resulted in gratuitous, violent, and highly charged available content.
We cannot say what percent of youth are utilizing the Internet for “bad” or for
“good”—just as we cannot for adults—but young people are certainly finding
many creative and reflective uses for new media in particular.
In addition to the role of the Internet in young people’s active consumption
and production of media, some traditional news sources are finding ways to
incorporate youth as part of their audiences and content contributors. Youth
media programs worldwide have been in existence for at least 20 years. These
programs have been providing training to preschool students up to high-school
students in field production, studio production, media analysis/critical viewing,
and media distribution and evaluation in audio, video, animations, print, pho-
tography, and other media formats. However, among all the formats used, com-
puter based multimedia (e.g., Web design, digital video/audio, etc.) make up
that largest percentage (54 percent). Yet what may be most important is the type