Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This paper explores the media use patterns of 102 high school and college students with the goal of assessing: 1) the prevalence of media use in the daily lives of young audiences; 2) the extent to which respondents “multitask” with media and use multiple media simultaneously; and 3) whether there are differences in media use patterns between high school teens (ages 14-16) and college age young adults (17-22). Respondents kept a daily time use diary for seven consecutive days detailing their media use and other activities. Analyses indicate that high school students spend, on average, 4 ½ hours a day with media while college students spend an average of 6 hours a day using media. Multiple simultaneous use of media was a relatively infrequent activity, occurring only 17 percent of the time. Multitasking with media was much more prevalent in this sample, occurring almost 77 percent of the time. The overall proportion of time spent using multiple media and multitasking was significantly greater for college age students. Interestingly, age differences in media use, multitasking and multiple media use disappeared on Fridays and Saturdays, suggesting that it is the structure of the day (i.e., no school or schoolwork) that shapes how much and how media are used. The paper concludes by considering the ways in which multitasking and multiple media use might shape both our notions of “exposure” to media content and our conceptualization of media effects on youth.