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how teens use media Fact is, their media habits are similar to adults' Jun 30, 2009 Teenagers have a reputation for doing nearly everything the opposite of their parents. But when it comes to how they use media, that’s not true at all. In fact, teens’ and adults’ media usage is much more similar than it is different, according to a new report from Nielsen entitled “How Teens Use Media.” The report found that teens’ TV time has risen 6 percent over the past five years, mirroring increases seen for adults. Like adults, teens are watching more and more cable TV at the expense of broadcast. Teens use more than one type of media simultaneously only 23 percent of the time, compared to 31 percent for adults. And while adults tend to use the internet more than teens, they frequent many of the same categories, with search and portals right at the top. Nic Covey, director of insights at Nielsen and author of the report, talks to Media Life about teens’ media habits, why they aren’t big time-shifters, and why they are huge texters. What did you find most surprising or most interesting about this study? Like so many in the industry, I expected that when we aggregated our insights from across media and around the world, we’d see these incredible differences in how teens behave compared to other demographic segments. I expected TV to be an important part of teen lives but that new media would be cannibalizing use of traditional media. What we found instead is that teens are really pretty “normal,” that the introduction of new media into their lives has simply expanded their media clock, as it has for everyone. Teens are social networking and texting and listening to their MP3 players, but this activity isn’t coming at the cost of traditional consumption. What is the most important thing media buyers or planners can take from it? Media buyers owe it to their clients to delineate between teen hype and reality. Yes, teens are unique in many ways, but the notion that they can only be reached by being their friend on Facebook is obtuse. The task won’t be easy, but buyers have an opportunity to talk their clients off of the ledge and explain that teens can actually be reached by many of the traditional methods of marketing and communications. Focus on the averages, not the outliers, and buyers will see that they don’t need to rewire their systems yet. What changes have you seen in teens' media behavior over the past five years? When it comes to media, teens are simply doing more. While watching more and more television, they’ve somehow managed to ramp up their use of internet, mobile phones and digital audio. At the same time they still go to the movies, listen to the radio and even open up a newspaper from time to time. The biggest change we’ve seen in the last five years is that teens haven’t yet hit a saturation point. They’re content to consume more and more media and communications. Some believe that’s because they are doing all of this concurrently, but actually teens show less propensity to multi-task media than adults. Others believe this is all at the cost of advertising engagement, but actually traditional advertising still resonates with teens. The biggest change over the last five years has simply been the piling on of additional media. The biggest change in the next five years will be the interconnectivity of all of it. Teen media consumption today still happens very much in media silos. Like all consumers, teens will increasingly demand that information and content flow seamlessly across the channels they rely on. Why are there so many misconceptions about teens' media habits being different from the total population? Built into our industry are media properties, advertising agencies, trade publications and even research providers whose businesses rely on the notion that teens are an alien and elusive audience. There is a market for their bizarreness and it tends to be self-perpetuating. What’s more, teens really are a very important segment of our population – one that gets much attention from popular and trade press because of their importance from marketing, cultural, social and civic perspectives. I think we’re right to pay special attention to the behaviors of this group, but their behavior must be analyzed in the context of broader media trends, in which we find them more similar to adults than many thought. What is driving the shift in teen TV viewing from broadcast to ad-supported cable? Teens aren’t unique in their increased viewing of cable TV. Their viewing behavior reflects a larger fragmentation of the TV viewing experience as more and more content has become available. What’s unique for teens is that this is the only TV experience they know. Teens today have only known a universe of dozens of cable and broadcast choices, and I suspect very few even delineate between the two. Why do teens prefer live TV to time shifted, and how does that differ from total TV viewers? Teens are time-shifting, increasingly so, but most of their viewing is still done live and they tend to watch less time-shifted programming than adults. In part, this could be because of who controls the DVR lineup in a household. DVRs are mostly scheduled to record the programming choices of the heads of household who pay the bill. Lower teen propensity to time-shift may also have to do with planning. Teens are not renowned for their foresight and organization, and for them the TV viewing may still be more casual and as-wanted than it is for their parents. In which areas do teens' media habits differ most from adults? The paper argues that in many ways teens are similar to adults, but there are places where we see teens behaving uniquely. The biggest difference are in internet use, where teens spend about half as much time online; in mobile behavior, where teens text about six times the average and are early adopters of all mobile media; and in advertising engagement, where teens tend to be less likely to recall an ad, but more likely to like the ad once they see it. What media are teens most avid users of and why? Across the media, teens still spend most of their time watching TV. Television’s profound importance in our culture hasn’t been lost on a generation of digital natives and teens still rely on TV for news and entertainment, to the tune of more than three hours a day. As with the larger population, the lean-back value proposition of the TV experience still resonates with teens. If I approach the question differently, you might be asking which medium teens are demographically the most avid users of. That “medium” is clearly text-messaging, for both interpersonal as well as information and entertainment purposes. Texting has become an integral part of teen lives, more so than any other demographic group. In the first quarter of this year the typical U.S. teen sent or received 2,899 text messages compared to 191 calls – that’s about six times the average number of texts and nearly 100 text-messages per day. Texting is picking up across age groups, but it’s clear that teens are leading this communications shift by leaps and bounds.
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