More Media, But Less TV for Teens
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By Lauren Barack -- School Library Journal, 7/20/2009
While teens are turning to TV and radio programming far less often, they’re consuming more media, the digital kind, that is.
So says a new report from Morgan Stanley, which turned to its 15-year-old summer intern Matthew Robson to write the study, “How Teenagers Consume Media,” assuming that since he is a teen, he would know.
As most educators and librarians are aware, where there are teens there’s usually some form of digital media, whether its an online game or a mobile phone, which today can access everything from YouTube to Facebook and from Twitter to online radio stations.
What might prove most worrisome for teachers and librarians, however, is the absolute reluctance of teens, according to Robson, to turn to printed matter, or any long-form text, for their news or information.
“No teenager I know of regularly reads a newspaper, as most do not have the time and cannot be bothered to read pages and pages of text while they could watch the news summarized on the Internet or on TV,” writes Robson.
Linda Braun, the new president of the Young Adult Library Services Association, says there’s definitely a teachable moment in those comments. “I think it provides us with an opportunity to teach how to work with content,” she comments.
Certainly cost is one reason why teens forgo a daily paper for a free television show. For free broadsheets, Robson says teens might make an exception. And the teen notes in his report that most of his peers have little but pocket change and are reluctant, it seems, to pay for any media from music to ring tones, let alone a newspaper.
But online access is easy to find, with computers available both at home and at school. And that’s exactly where educators, believes Braun, can begin their campaign.
“One of the things we’re learning is how teens access information is different,” says Braun. “So maybe, depending on the subject, we start with TMZ.com and then build on that base. It’s not about reading longer text. But about going deeper.”
A request to Morgan Stanley to interview Robson was not returned.
