Jim Liebelt's Youth Culture Watch

Media Images of Alcohol Can Drive You to Drink

Young men who watched the movie American Pie with accompanying commercials for alcohol were more apt to grab a beer or glass of wine from the refrigerator, compared to those who watched a movie without the drinking prompts.

This study shows for the first time the effect of on-screen depictions of alcohol and their influence on consumers' behavior, said the researchers, who are from Canada and the Netherlands.

"It's one of those things the majority of people have assumed to be the case, but it's nice to have the empirical evidence," said Jeffrey T. Parsons, chair of psychology at Hunter College in New York City. Parsons was not involved with the study, which was published online March 4 in the journal Alcohol and Alcoholism.

But, Parsons added, the study had limitations.

"It was done just with young men, and there are a lot of differences in the role of gender and alcohol," he said. "It's also a Dutch study that used American movies. Part of me wonders if it's just bad American movies that make people drink."

The new research isn't the only new troubling data coming out on alcohol and alcohol abuse.

On Tuesday, a report in the March issue of the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine said that an estimated 11 percent to 20 percent of U.S. teens have T-shirts, headwear, jewelry, key chains and other paraphernalia emblazoned with brands of alcoholic beverages. These children seem to be more prone to end up being binge drinkers, the Dartmouth researchers noted.

Source: U.S. News & World Report
http://health.usnews.com/articles/health/healthday/2009/03/04/media-images-of-alcohol-can-drive-you-to-drink.html

More Entertainment on Computer Than TV for Millenials

According to Deloitte's State of the Media Democracy survey, three-quarters of Millennials (ages 14 to 25) view the computer as more of an entertainment device than their television. Ed Moran, Deloitte director of product innovation, notes that "This (early-adopter) generation of consumers was the first to be raised on the Internet and is united across borders and cultures by their digital media preferences, so the implications for global marketers are unprecedented." 
Across five surveyed countries, Millennials are the most active in gaming, music and Internet use for socializing:

80% of Millennials are regularly searching, downloading and listening to music over the Internet
73% are also regularly socializing online (via social networking sites, chat rooms or message boards)
59% of Millennials use their mobile phone as an entertainment device, versus an average of 33% of all consumers.

Millenials are spending one-third less time watching their television than are other generations.

Source: Center for Media Research
http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=99040

Survey: Web Video Beats TV Among Respondents Ages 18-24

In the ever-evolving practices of how our society consumes its media, it comes as no surprise to me that this recent survey indicates that 18-to-24-year-olds spend more time watching web based video than they do watching television. Can the end of television as we've known it be far behind? I'm guessing that one day, today's kids will look back at television programming as it now exists with nostalgia, much like I do on ocassion in regard to the black and white tv I grew up watching, where it was such a kick to stay up late enough to witness the appearance of the test pattern while the Star-Spangled Banner played in the background...

Coveted 18- to-24-year-old consumers now spend more time watching Web-distributed video than broadcast television, according to a new survey released by online video ad network LiveRail.

"We polled several hundred under-25-year-olds, and an overwhelming majority are now watching as much or more video content online as on regular TV," said Mark Trefgarne, CEO of LiveRail. "We were genuinely surprised by the results."

Rather than short-form consumer-generated media, Trefgarne attributes this trend largely to an increase in the availability of quality long-form content from sites like Hulu and TV.com.

Of these respondents, 53% stated that in an average month they spent "more time watching online video than TV." About 19% of respondents said they watched "about the same," while 28% said they watched "more TV than online video."

According to comScore, frequent viewers are now consuming an average of 273.1 minutes of online video content per month--up from 195 minutes a year ago.

Source: Online Media Daily
http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.san&s=98512&Nid=51271&p=989684

Report Ties Children's Use of Media to Their Health

The National Institutes of Health and a nonprofit advocacy group, Common Sense Media, have another reason for President-elect Barack Obama to keep urging parents to “turn off the TV.”

In what researchers call the first report of its kind, a review of 173 studies about the effects of media consumption on children asserts that a strong correlation exists between greater exposure and adverse health outcomes.

“Coach potato does, unfortunately, sum it up pretty well,” said Ezekiel J. Emanuel, chairman of the bioethics department at the institutes’ clinical center, one of the study’s five reviewers.

The report should compel lawmakers to underwrite media education efforts and public service advertising campaigns and should motivate the entertainment industry to be more “responsible and responsive,” said Jim Steyer, the chief executive of Common Sense Media, which helped to finance the study.

In a clear majority of those studies more time with television, films, video games, magazines, music and the Internet was linked to rises in childhood obesity, tobacco use and sexual behavior. A majority also showed strong correlations — what the researchers deemed “statistically significant associations” — with drug and alcohol use and low academic achievement.

Researchers sought to look at the health effects of a wide array of media and distill 30 years of research into a simple message. “The average parent doesn’t understand that if you plop your kids down in front of the TV or the computer for five hours a day, it can change their brain development, it can make them fat, and it can lead them to get involved in risky sexual activity at a young age,” Mr. Steyer said.

Source: Common Sense Media
http://www.commonsensemedia.org/about-us/press-room/Daily-Digest/2008/Report-Ties-Media-Use-To-Health

Adolescents' TV Watching Is Linked to Violent Behavior

Adolescents who watch more than one hour of television a day are more likely to commit aggressive and violent acts as adults, according to a 17-year study reported in the journal Science.

The study, which tracked more than 700 adolescents into adulthood, found that young people watching one to three hours of television daily were almost four times more likely to commit violent and aggressive acts later in life than those who watched less than an hour of TV a day.

Girls as well as boys exhibited increased aggression, according to the study, which was hailed by psychologists and social scientists as more evidence of TV's harmful effects.

"It's a very important study and has a great deal of credibility--it very niftily isolates television as a causal factor," said George Comstock, a researcher on media violence at Syracuse University in New York.

It is also the first study, Comstock said, to clearly link TV viewing among adolescents to later, adult violence.

Source: Los Angeles Times
http://www.latimes.com/features/health/la-hew-kidviolence2002,0,2251451.story

An important study here! Many have suggested this link in the past, but it's nice that researchers have done the hard work of being patient over 17-years in order to complete this study. It might not be the last word on the issue (I'm sure it won't be!) but parents have greater reason now to place limits on amount of television screen time they permit their children to consume. (Of course, it will also be important to understand that kids are watching less television these days and are consuming more of their video via the Internet and downloads. I may seem obvious, but I want to caution parents that it's not the television medium that leads to the aggressive and violent behaviors in later life, but the content of what adolescents watch.)

Many Teens Spend 40 Hours a Week on 'Screen Time' During High School

For about a third of high school age teenagers, "Screen Time" each week amounts to a full time job!

While most teenagers (60 percent) spend on average 20 hours per week in front of television and computer screens, a third spend closer to 40 hours per week, and about 7 percent are exposed to more than 50 hours of ‘screen-time’ per week, according to a study presented at the American Heart Association’s 48th Annual Conference on Cardiovascular Disease Epidemiology and Prevention.

Researchers looked at patterns of screen-time through high school, including total time viewing television, video, computer and the Internet. Then they examined the influence of neighborhood social factors on distinct patterns of screen-time.

“Boys and those whose parents had lower educational attainment were much more likely to be in the ‘high-screen time’ group,” said Tracie A. Barnett, Ph.D., lead author of the study. “Teens with high levels of screen time may be at increased risk of obesity.”

Barnett and colleagues identified distinct levels of screen-time for each of television/video and computer/Internet use. Overall, their study showed that:

* 52 percent of boys and 26 percent of girls reported average total screen-time levels above 42 hours per week;
* 52 percent of boys and 39 percent of girls reported average levels of TV/video use above 23 hours per week;
* 24 percent of boys and 7 percent of girls reported average levels of computer/Internet use of almost 30 hours per week.

Source: Labspaces.net
http://www.labspaces.net/view_news_comments.php?newsID=3883

How Much Money is Spent on Advertising?

Pop Quiz: How much money is spent by companies in the USA on advertising in a year?

A. 1.9 Billion Dollars
B. 6.8 Billion Dollars
C. 12.3 Billion Dollars
D. 14.9 Billion Dollars

If you chose any of the above, sorry, it was a trick question. I just came across the stats regarding advertising spending for 2006 and the actual amount spent is much higher. A lot higher. The number is actually just shy of 150 Billion dollars. Read it again: 150 Billion dollars. That's more than the individual Gross National Products of some 185 countries. There are only some 35 countries in the world that have a GNP higher than the amount U.S. companies (as a whole) spend on advertising. Why do our companies spend so much?

Advertising works. It's all about the bottom line. The goal of advertising (obviously) is to sell goods and services, to you and to your kids. This just serves as an encouragement to talk to your kids about advertising. There are plenty of opportunities in any given day to engage in such a discussion. Remind your kids that the point of advertising is to create a desire within them in order to get them to buy something, so that companies can add to their profits. It's the American way. It's not that all advertising is bad, it's just that kids should learn and become savvy enough to realize that everyday, they will encounter companies (via advertising) that want their money.

TNS Media Intelligence Reports U.S. Advertising Expenditures Increased 4.1 Percent in 2006
Total advertising expenditures in 2006 increased 4.1 percent to $149.6 billion as compared to 2005, according to data released today by TNS Media Intelligence, the leading provider of strategic advertising and marketing information. Ad spending during the fourth quarter of 2006 was up by 4.2 percent against the same period in 2005.

Source: TNS Media Intelligence
http://www.tns-mi.com/news/03132007.htm

Another Sign of the Times: More Teens Not Buying CDs

According to The NPD Group, a market research firm in Port Washington, NY, an estimated one million consumers dropped out of the CD buyer market in 2007, a flight led by younger consumers. In fact, some 48% of U.S. teens did not purchase a single CD in 2007, compared to 38% in 2006.

NPD reports that the amount of music that US consumers acquired last year increased by 6%. However, despite a sharp increase in legal digital download revenues it was not enough to offset a declines in physical CD sales, which resulted in a net 10% decline in music spending (from $44 to $40 per capita among Internet users). As a result the overall portion of music consumption that consumers actually paid for fell to 42% in 2007 from 48% in 2006

The percent of the Internet population in the US who used illegal P2P and file-sharing services reached a plateau of around 19% last year. But, the number of files each user downloaded increased, and P2P music sharing continued to grow aggressively among teens.

According to the study legal music downloads now account for 10% of all music acquired in the US, and is why Apple’s iTunes is amazingly now the second-largest music retailer in the US after Wal-Mart!

Source: ZeroPaid
http://www.zeropaid.com/news/9294/Study:+More+Teens+Not+Buying+CDs

Wow! I feel so "hip", so current, so relevant! While I don't buy a lot of new music, I haven't purchased a CD in at least three or four years now. I buy and download all my music from iTunes!

10 Billion Video Views Online in December

A recently released comScore Video Metrix service report, revealed that U.S. Internet users watched more than 10 billion videos online during the month of December, 2007, representing the single heaviest month for online video consumption since comScore initiated its tracking service. Google Sites saw substantial growth and extended its video market share gains, now accounting for nearly one out of every three videos viewed online.

In total, nearly 141 million Americans viewed online video in December. Google Sites also captured the largest online video audience with 79 million unique viewers, followed by Fox Interactive Media with 43.9 million and Yahoo! Sites with 38.2 million.

Other notable findings from December 2007 include:
77.6 million viewers watched 3.2 billion videos on YouTube.com (41.6 videos per viewer)
40.5 million viewers watched 334 million videos on MySpace.com (8.2 videos per viewer)
Online viewers watched an average of 3.4 hours (203 minutes) of online video during the month, representing a 34-percent gain since the beginning of 2007
The average online video duration was 2.8 minutes
The average online video viewer consumed 72 videos

Source: Center for Media Research
http://blogs.mediapost.com/research_brief/?p=1646

Parents, do you know what your kids are watching online?

A Reminder of the Obvious

I would be surprised if anyone is actually surprised by this:

Study finds U.S. music awash in booze and drugs
U.S. popular music is awash with lyrics about drugs, alcohol and tobacco. Medical researchers have reviewed the words of the 279 top songs of 2005 to estimate just how common they are.

Their report on Monday showed a third of the songs had explicit references to substance abuse. And two-thirds of these references placed drugs, alcohol and tobacco in a positive light by associating them with sex, partying and humor, according to the team led by Dr. Brian Primack of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.

They calculated that with Americans aged 15 to 18 listening to 2.4 hours of music daily, they hear 84 musical references to substance use a day and more than 30,000 a year.
Source: Reuters
http://www.reuters.com/article/entertainmentNews/idUSN0144737220080204?feedType=RSS&feedName=entertainmentNews

The article noted that 15-to-18-year-olds hear 30,000 references to substance abuse per year. If two-thirds of the references are from a pro-substance use perspective, then kids hear 20,000 such messages per year. Can it actually be that these references have no impact on kids? I'm not sure it's possible to completely prevent these messages from having any influence. To be sure, this is a good reminder to parents that they need to engage their kids in discussions about media influence and to be proactive in laying a solid foundation of morals and values.

To learn more about media influence and building healthy morals and values, click on the following article titles:

Keeping Your Kids Safe by Being Media-Wise
Building Healthy Morals and Values