Youth media use study

"A national survey found that with technology allowing nearly 24-hour media access as children and teens go about their daily lives, the amount of time young people spend with entertainment media has risen dramatically, especially among minority youth. Today, 8-18 year-olds devote an average of 7 hours and 38 minutes (7:38) to using entertainment media across a typical day (more than 53 hours a week). And because they spend so much of that time 'media multitasking' (using more than one medium at a time), they actually manage to pack a total of 10 hours and 45 minutes (10:45) worth of media content into those 7½ hours. This study is the third in a series of large-scale, nationally representative surveys by the Foundation about young people's media use. It includes data from all three waves of the study (1999, 2004, and 2009), and is among the largest and most comprehensive publicly available sources of information about media use among American youth." Kaiser Family Foundation. (2010). Generation M2: Media in the Lives of 8- to 18-Year-Olds. http://www.kff.org/entmedia/mh012010pkg.cfm

teens and smoking studies

Teens lured by screen smoking, tobacco promotions
Movies that feature cigarettes, as well as the tobacco industry's smoking-related promotions, prompt teenagers to smoke, according to a recent report. Although smoking declined to 21% of the U.S. adult population in 2006 from 42% in 1965, some 4,000 teenagers still light up for the first time each day and 1,000 of them become habitual smokers.
Zosia Kmietowicz. (2008). BMA calls for ban on smoking images that "keep the habit cool" among children British Medical Journal, 337:a713


Mass media has the power to both encourage tobacco use, especially among young people, and to discourage it. This is the first report to make the conclusion that there is a causal relationship between exposure to depiction of smoking in the movies and youth beginning to smoke
Melanie Wakefield. (2008). The Role of the Media in Promoting and Reducing Tobacco Use. Reckvill, MD: U. S. National Cancer Institute.
cancercontrol.cancer.gov/tcrb/monographs/19/docs/M19MediaFactSheet.pdf

Impact of electronic media on children

Children and Electronic Media is the Focus of New Volume
The volume focuses on how common forms of electronic media influences the wellbeing of children and adolescents. Accompanying the journal is an Executive Summary and a Policy Brief.
The volume concludes that rather than focusing on the type of technology children use, parents and policymakers should focus on what is being offered to children on the various media platforms. The fifteen leading scholars who contributed to the volume consider how exposure to different media forms are linked with school achievement, cognition, engagement in extracurricular activities, social interaction, aggression, fear and anxiety, risky behaviors, and lifestyle choices.
Media technology can be a positive force in the lives of children and youth. Editors Jeanne Brooks-Gunn and Elisabeth Hirschhorn Donahue argue in the Introduction that while government's ability to regulate content is weak, educators and families can promote child wellbeing by ensuring that children engage media in a positive way.
Children and Electronic Media. The Future of Children (Vol. 18, No. 1).
http://www.futureofchildren.org/pubs-info2825/pubs-info_show.htm?doc_id=674322

News report

Young Adults Are Giving Newspapers Scant Notice
Most teenagers and adults 30 and younger are not following the news closely at all, according to a recent report.
Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy. (2007). Young People and News. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University.