The Kaiser Family Foundation has released its annual report on kids and their media use. There was a lengthy article in the NY Times about it yesterday. The report and related presentation are free and they paint a scary picture for most traditional media, except for TV (although TV is down) and, surprisingly, radio.
Not surprisingly, Internet (especially social networking) and mobile are key areas of focus of these kids. And 84% of them have Internet access at home, many in their bedrooms. The press release summarizes the high-level findings. Here are a few noteworthy charts from the report:
While TV dominates media usage, there is considerable media multi-tasking during TV use (read: people only partly paying attention). Print media are just — to put it bluntly — screwed unless as these kids mature they spend more time with print. Don’t bet on it. Finally 25% of computer time is spent with social networks.
There are lots of implications for publishers and marketers, although there’s no discussion of advertising in these slides or in the larger report. Where are marketers going to be able to most effectively market to young people in the US? On social networks, in games, on mobile phones (SMS) and radio to some degree. Magazines may offer some effective marketing opportunities in selected cases. However, online “share of voice” is going to be tough; there’s lots of clutter and noise. Thus mobile may turn out to be the most effective tool for reaching youth accordingly.
TV is going to offer mixed results; it’s the largest audience (though it continues to fragment) but people aren’t paying attention to ads for the most part.
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Related: Owners of digital readers actually read more books:
Among active readers who own an e-reader, about 48% reported reading more books as a consequence of having such products, as compared to those who do not own an e-reader where only 15% reported reading more books (44% vs. 23%, respectively for magazines); 36% percent of the books read by people with e-readers represent incremental consumption—meaning more than one-third of the books read on e-readers would not have been read in print
Screenwerk 
January 21, 2010 at 5:50 pm
Greg… The results of this report may be scary for print media, but I find them much more frightening for our children and society… consumption of the latest “opiate of the masses” is on the rise among our youth. Bah humbug.
January 21, 2010 at 7:40 pm
Michael:
I stayed away from that aspect of the story because it’s been widely covered. But yes, I agree, 10+ hours of daily media consumption is very scary to me as a parent.
February 27, 2010 at 2:03 pm
[…] lower), as compared to only a quarter of those kids who view fewer than three hours of media daily. Kids do still read, in spite of the easy access to alternatives, but books take up an average of only 25 minutes a day […]