[p2p-research] paper on millenials and social media risk

[Michel Bauwens]

My friend Jan Servaes has written a paper on millenials and welcome
comments,

YOu can request the full original pdf via his email,

Michel


*

Surviving in a 24/7 media shock and awe –

distracted by everything
*

Jan Servaes* & Patchanee Malikhao**

* UNESCO Chair in Communication for Sustainable Social Change

** Researcher, School of Public Health and Health Sciences

University of Massachusetts, Amherst MA, USA

csschange at gmail.com

Excerpt:
*

The Millennials (born after 1980)
*

According to Taylor & Keeter (2010), *Millennials *– the American teens and
twentysomethings

born after 1980 who are making the passage into adulthood – have begun to

forge their own personalities and identities: *confident, self-expressive,
liberal, upbeat and
*

4
*

open to change. *They are more ethnically and racially diverse than older
adults. They’re

less religious, less likely to have served in the military, and are on track
to become the

most educated generation in American history.

However, in many of their lifestyle choices, Millennials are not much
different from

adults of other generations. And it’s often their ideology or socioeconomic
status, rather

than their age, that drives their behaviors. In realms as disparate as gun
ownership and

going green, Millennials are in the mainstream. But in some corners of their
lives, they

find unique ways to express themselves. Technology usage is one. Body art
with

piercings and tattoos is another.

Their entry into careers and first jobs has been badly set back by the
recent ‘Great

Recession’, but they are more upbeat than their elders about their own
economic futures

as well as about the overall state of the nation.

“They are history’s first ‘always connected’ generation. Steeped in digital
technology and

social media, they treat their multi-tasking hand-held gadgets almost like a
body part –

for better and worse. More than eight-in-ten say they sleep with a cell
phone glowing by

the bed, poised to disgorge texts, phone calls, emails, songs, news, videos,
games and

wake-up jingles. But sometimes convenience yields to temptation. Nearly
two-thirds

admit to texting while driving” (Taylor & Keeter 2010:1, more details in
Chapter 4).

They embrace multiple technological modes of self-expression. It’s not just
these hi-tech

gadgets—it’s the way they’ve fused their social lives into them. Three
quarters have

created a profile on a social networking site. One-in-five have posted a
video of

themselves online.
*

Millennials *have a distinctive reason for feeling distinctive. In response
to an open-ended

follow-up question, 24% say it’s because of their use of technology.
*Generation
Xers
*

(people born between 1965 and 1980) also cite technology as their
generation’s biggest

source of distinctiveness, but far fewer—just 12%—say this. *Baby
Boomers’ *(born
1946-

1964) feelings of distinctiveness coalesce mainly around work ethic, which
17% cite as

their most prominent identity badge. For the *Silent Generation *(born
between 1928 and

1945) it is the shared experience of the Depression and World War II, which
14% cite as

the biggest reason to stand apart (see Table 1) (Taylor & Keeter 2010:
Chapter 3*).
**

Table 1: What Makes Your Generation Unique?

Millennial Gen X Boomer Silent
*

1. Technology use (24%) Technology use (12%) Work ethic (17%) WW II,
Depression (14%)

2. Music/Pop culture (11%) Work ethic (11%) Respectful (14%) Smarter (13%)

3. Liberal/tolerant (7%) Conservative/Trad’l (7%) Values/Morals (8%) Honest
(12%)

4. Smarter (6%) Smarter (6%) “Baby Boomers” (6%) Work ethic (10%)

5. Clothes (5%) Respectful (5%) Smarter (5%) Values/Morals (10%)

Note: Based on respondents who said their generation was unique/distinct.
Items represent individual,

open-ended responses. Top five responses are shown for each age group.
Sample sizes for sub-groups are

as follows: Millennials, n=527; Gen X, n=173; Boomers, n=283; Silent, n=205.

5
*

The Postmodern American Youth’s Consumption of the Mass Media and

Individualism, Narcissism, Sexuality, and Health Risk Behaviors
*

>From a more critical and general perspective, Elliott and Lemert (2007)
propose that

globalization has a profound impact on the individual level, and that causes
a new kind of

individualism. They define this *new individualism *as a highly risk-taking,
experimenting

and self-expressing individual underpinned by new forms of apprehension,
anguish and

anxiety. As each individual has become a consumer of the media conglomerate
in a

capitalistic society, the impact on each person’s experiences of gender
identity, sexuality

and family life is the topic discussed by many scholars. Elliot and Lemert
(2006: 114)

note that sexuality in the US is currently framed and regulated through mass
media,

advertising, and information culture as a consequence of globalization and
that various

forms of sexuality can be called ‘*discursive sexuality’ *among the new
generation. This

contributes to new attitudes toward sex, sexuality, and individual identity,
according to

the American Academy of Pediatrics (2001). Their report states: “American
media are

thought to be the most sexually suggestive in the Western Hemisphere. The
average

American adolescent will view nearly 14,000 sexual references per year, yet
only 165 of

these references deal with birth control, self-control, abstinence, or the
risk of pregnancy

or STDs. In a recent content analysis, 56% of all programs on American
television were

found to contain sexual content. The so-called “family hour” of prime-time
television

(8:00 to 9:00 pm) contains on average more than 8 sexual incidents, which is
more than 4

times what it contained in 1976. Nearly one third of family-hour shows
contain sexual

references, and the incidence of vulgar language is also increasing. Soap
operas, which

are extremely popular with adolescents and preadolescents, might be one
ideal venue for

responsible sexual portrayals, yet a recent study of 50 hours of daytime
dramas found 156

acts of sexual intercourse with only 5 references to contraception or safe
sex” (American

Academy of Pediatrics 2001: 191) (see also Collins, 2005).

Among American youth culture, there is also evidence that increasing
globalization

within media systems in the US has shaped the degree of individualism in
society (Elliot

& Lemert, 2006: 4-5) and contributes to new attitudes toward sex, sexuality,
and

individual identity. The latter may imply the positive aspect of being more
mature than

adolescents from previous generations. Brown, Halpern and L’Engle (2005:
424)

investigated the influence of sexual media contents that adolescents consume
in their

private rooms and their sexuality in 2005. They found a relationship of
earlier pubertal

timing and increased interest in viewing sexual media content and increase
exposure to

information about dating, birth control, and sexually transmitted diseases
(STDs). The

findings suggest that the mass media may replace peers in sexual related
information

seeking of adolescents in an environment of increasing physical isolation.
The mass

media are dubbed as “a sexual super peer” for early maturing girls. However,
a negative

aspect is that the “super peer” can normalizing frequent sexual activities
portrayals in the

media and, thus, encouraging early sexual behaviors (American Academy of
Pediatrics

2008: 192).

Moreover, the new identity of adolescents may be associated with
self-destructive

behaviors as a result of mass media consumption. Escobar-Chaves and Anderson
(2008)

report research findings on the influence of the mass media consumption
among

adolescents and five health risk behaviors, identified by the Centers for
Disease Control

6

and Prevention, which are obesity, smoking, drinking, sexual risk taking,
and violence.

The researchers found no clear-cut research results that suggest any
relationship between

electronic media use and obesity (Escobar-Chaves & Anderson 2008: 154).
However,

they report that longitudinal, experimental, and cross-sectional studies
suggest strong

links of viewing smoking favourably and becoming smokers, with exposure to
smoking

in the media. Other research findings strongly suggest that there is an
association between

exposure to alcohol advertising and to alcohol consumption portrayed in TV
and movies

and the increase of adolescents’ alcohol use (Escobar-Chaves & Anderson
2008: 162). It

was found that sexual content exposure through radio, CDs, and tapes
contribute to

initiation of non-coital sexual behaviour among adolescents (Escobar-Chaves
&

Anderson 2008: 165). Collins, Elliott, Berry, Kanouse et al. (2008: 288)
could not find

clear-cut findings about exposure of sexual contents on TV but they
suggested that

exposure to sexual talk and behaviour on TV is likely to advance the
initiation of both

coital and noncoital sexual activities. However, recent studies show that
increased sexual

knowledge or access to birth control does not lead adolescents to earlier
sexual activities

behaviors (American Academy of Pediatrics 2008: 192).

Last but not least, research evidence shows clearly that exposure to
violence through

media is a causal risk factor for aggressive and violent behavior. It is
expected that the

long term effect of violent video games will be larger than that of TV but
smaller that that

of gang membership (Escobar-Chaves & Anderson 2008: 169).

High levels of individualism can lead to *narcissism*. Twenge and Campbell
(2009: 19)

state in their book, “The Narcissism Epidemic”, that the central feature of
narcissism is a

very positive and inflated view of self and this value is growing rapidly in
the American

culture fueled by the mass media, including the new media, and changes in
parental

approaches to upbringing that emphasizes self-expression. Symbolic
representations of

the new American culture of self expression are the emphasis on celebrities
in the media,

the success of MySpace and Facebook as social networking sites, the
uploading of

personal videos on YouTube, twitter (micro blogging and text-based social
networking or

SMS on the internet via its own website) and blogging (Twenge and Campbell
2009).

Which leads Barbara Ehrenreich (2009) to wonder how the relentless promotion
of

positive thinking has ‘*undermined*’ America.
*

Young adults and their On- and Off-line life
*

Research findings, such as in the recently released comprehensive report by
the Kaiser

Family Foundation (2010) and reports by the Pew Center (for instance:

http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2010/Social-Media-and-Young-Adults.aspx),

highlight that media are among the most powerful forces in young people’s
lives today.

Eight- to thirty-somethings in the US spend more than 50 hours in front of a
screen each

week. That is more than a regular working week. The TV shows they watch,
video games

they play, songs they listen to, books they read, text messages they send
and websites

they visit are an enormous part of their lives, offering a constant stream
of messages

about families, peers, relationships, gender roles, sex, violence, food,
values, clothes, and

so on.

7

The study by the Kaiser Family Foundation (2010) found that the use of every
type of

media has increased over the past 10 years, with the exception of reading.
In just the past

five years, the increases range from 24 minutes a day for video games, to 27
minutes a

day for computers, 38 minutes for TV content, and 47 minutes a day for music
and other

audio. During this same period, time spent reading went from 43 to 38
minutes a day, not

a statistically significant change. But breaking out different types of
print does uncover

some statistically significant trends. For example, time spent reading
magazines dropped

from 14 to nine minutes a day over the past five years, and time spent
reading

newspapers went down from six minutes a day to three; but time spent reading
books

remained steady, and actually increased slightly over the past 10 years
(from 21 to 25

minutes a day) (Rideout, Foehr & Roberts, 2010).

The intensity and way social media are being used is already changing. Since
2006,

blogging has dropped among teens (age 12-17) and young adults (age 18-29)
while

simultaneously rising among older adults (older than 30). As the tools and
technology

embedded in social networking sites change, and use of the sites continues
to grow, youth

may be exchanging ‘macro-blogging’ for microblogging with status updates
(Lenhart,

Purcell et al. 2010a).

Both teen and adult use of social networking sites has risen significantly,
yet there are

shifts and some drops in the proportion of teens using several social
networking site

features (Lenhart, Purcell et al. 2010a):
*

Social networking
*

• 73% of wired American teens now use social networking websites, a
significant

increase from previous surveys. Just over half of online teens (55%) used
social

networking sites in November 2006 and 65% did so in February 2008.

• As the teen social networking population has increased, the popularity of
some

sites’ features has shifted. Compared with SNS activity in February 2008, a

smaller proportion of teens in mid-2009 were sending daily messages to
friends

via SNS, or sending bulletins, group messages or private messages on the
sites.

• 47% of online adults use social networking sites, up from 37% in November

2008.

• Young adults act much like teens in their tendency to use these sites.
Fully 72% of

online 18-29 year olds use social networking websites, nearly identical to
the rate

among teens, and significantly higher than the 39% of internet users ages 30
and

up who use these sites.

• Adults are increasingly fragmenting their social networking experience as
a

majority of those who use social networking sites – 52% – say they have two
or

more different profiles. That is up from 42% who had multiple profiles in
May

2008.

• *Facebook *is currently the most commonly-used online social network among

adults. Among adult profile owners 73% have a profile on Facebook, 48% have
a

profile on MySpace and 14% have a LinkedIn profile.

8

• The specific sites on which young adults maintain their profiles are
different from

those used by older adults: Young profile owners are much more likely to

maintain a profile on *MySpace *(66% of young profile owners do so, compared

with just 36% of those thirty and older) but less likely to have a profile
on the

professionally-oriented *LinkedIn *(7% vs. 19%). In contrast, adult profile
owners

under thirty and those thirty and older are equally likely to maintain a
profile on

Facebook (71% of young profile owners do so, compared with 75% of older

profile owners).
*

Twitter
*

• While teens are bigger users of almost all other online applications,
Twitter is an

exception. Only 8% of internet users ages 12-17 use *Twitter*. Hence, teens
are not

using Twitter in large numbers.

• Older teens are more likely to use Twitter than their younger
counterparts; 10% of

online teens ages 14-17 do so, compared with 5% of those ages 12-13.

• High school age girls are particularly likely to use Twitter. Thirteen
percent of

online girls ages 14-17 use Twitter, compared with 7% of boys that age.

• 19% of adult internet users use Twitter or similar services to post short
status

updates and view the updates of others online.

• Young adults lead the way when it comes to using Twitter or status
updating.

One-third of online 18-29 year olds post or read status updates.
*

Wireless
*

• Wireless internet use rates are especially high among young adults, and
the laptop

has replaced the desktop as the computer of choice among those under thirty.

• 81% of adults between the ages of 18 and 29 are wireless internet users.
By

comparison, 63% of 30-49 year olds and 34% of those ages 50 and up access
the

internet wirelessly.

• Roughly half of 18-29 year olds have accessed the internet wirelessly on a
laptop

(55%) or on a cell phone (55%), and about one quarter of 18-29 year-olds
(28%)

have accessed the internet wirelessly on another device such as an e-book
reader

or gaming device.

• The impact of the mobile web can be seen in young adults’ computer
choices.

Two-thirds of 18-29 year olds (66%) own a laptop or netbook, while 53% own a

desktop computer. Young adults are the only age cohort for which laptop

computers are more popular than desktops.

• African Americans adults are the most active users of the mobile web, and
their

use is growing at a faster pace than mobile internet use among white or
Hispanic

adults.
*

Cell phones
*

• Cell phone ownership is nearly ubiquitous among teens and young adults,
and

much of the growth in teen cell phone ownership has been driven by adoption

9

among the youngest teens: Three-quarters (75%) of teens and 93% of adults
ages

18-29 now have a cell phone.

• In the past five years, cell phone ownership has become mainstream among
even

the youngest teens. Fully 58% of 12-year olds now own a cell phone, up from
just

18% of such teens as recently as 2004.
*

Internet
*

• Internet use is near-ubiquitous among teens and young adults. In the last
decade,

the young adult internet population has remained the most likely to go
online:

93% of teens ages 12-17 go online, as do 93% of young adults ages 18-29. One

quarter (74%) of all adults ages 18 and older go online.

• Over the past ten years, teens and young adults have been consistently the
two

groups most likely to go online, even as the internet population has grown
and

even with documented larger increases in certain age cohorts (e.g. adults 65
and

older).

• The survey of teens also tracked some core internet activities by those
ages 12-17

and found:

• 62% of online teens get news about current events and politics online.

• 48% of wired teens have bought things online like books, clothing or
music, up

from 31% who had done so in 2000.

• 31% of online teens get health, dieting or physical fitness information
from the

internet. And 17% of online teens report they use the internet to gather

information about health topics that are hard to discuss with others such as
drug

use and sexual health topics.

In an updated survey, Lenhart, Purcell et al. (2010b) found that daily *text
messaging
*

among American teens has shot up since 2008, from 38% of teens texting
friends daily in

February of 2008 to 54% of teens texting daily in September 2009. And it's
not just

frequency – teens are sending enormous quantities of text messages a day.
Half of teens

send 50 or more text messages a day, or 1,500 texts a month, and one in
three send more

than 100 texts a day, or more than 3,000 texts a month. Older teen girls
ages 14-17 lead

the charge on text messaging, averaging 100 messages a day for the entire
cohort. The

youngest teen boys are the most resistant to texting – averaging 20 messages
per day.

Therefore Lenhart, Purcell et al. (2010b) conclude that text messaging has
become the

primary way that teens reach their friends, surpassing face-to-face contact,
email, instant

messaging and voice calling as the go-to daily communication tool for this
age group.

However, voice calling is still the preferred mode for reaching parents for
most teens.
*

Emerging issues
*

While participation in social networks is still strong, a survey released in
April 2010 by

the University of California, Berkeley, found that more than half the young
adults

questioned had become more concerned about *privacy *than they were five
years ago —

10

mirroring the number of people their parent’s age or older with that worry
(reported in

The New York Times, 9 May 2010). They are more diligent than older adults,
however,

in trying to protect themselves. In a new study to be released in May 2010,
the Pew

Internet Project has found that people in their 20s exert more control over
their digital

reputations than older adults, more vigorously deleting unwanted posts and
limiting

information about themselves. “Social networking requires vigilance, not
only in what

you post, but what your friends post about you,” said Mary Madden, a senior
research

specialist who oversaw the study by Pew, which examines online behavior.
“Now you are

responsible for everything” (NYT, 9 May 2010).

The erosion of privacy has become a pressing issue among active users of
social

networks. On 27 April 2010 the popular Civic Action site *MoveOn.org *launched
a

petition to urge Facebook to change its privacy settings

(http://civ.moveon.org/c4/facebook/?rc=fb&-17605428-EYYkolx). They claimed
that

Facebook scrambled to fix a security breach that allowed users to see their
friends’

supposedly private information, including personal chats.

Rideout, Foehr & Roberts (2010) made a distinction between *Light, Moderate,
and

Heavy Media Users *in their study. Heavy Users were defined as those who
consume

more than 16 hours worth of media content in a typical day (21% of all 8- to
18-year

olds); Moderate Users consume from 3–16 hours of content in a day (63%); and
Light

Users consume fewer than three hours of media in a typical day (17%). They
found

significant relationships between *media use and school grades*, and *media
use and

personal contendedness*. In other words, there is a relationship between the
amount of

time young people spend with media and the type of grades they report
getting in school.

The picture of young people’s personal contentedness that emerges from the
survey is

largely positive. Most respondents say they have lots of friends, get along
well with their

parents, and are happy at school. For example, 57% say the statement “I have
a lot of

friends” is “a lot” like them, 50% say the same about the statement “I get
along well with

my parents” and 38% about the statement “I have mostly been happy

at school this year.” This generally positive profile holds true across age,
gender, race,

family structure, and parent education, with some modest variations. “That
said, there is a

relationship between media use and the level of a young person’s reported
personal

contentedness. While the vast majority of young people tend to score quite
high on the

contentedness index, those who are less content spend more time with media
(13:06) than

those who are at the top of the contentedness index (8:44). And, looked at
from the other

perspective, those who spend more time with media report being less content”
(Rideout,

Foehr & Roberts, 2010: 12-13). However, the researchers explicitly state
that their study

cannot establish whether there is a cause and effect relationship between
media use

versus school grades or personal contentment. And if there is such a
relationship, it could

well run in both directions simultaneously.

While some experts worry about whether *multi-tasking *may make young people
less able

to focus and concentrate when they need to, parents are likely to be less
concerned about

their children multitasking their entertainment media than they are about
having them

multitask with media while they are supposed to be doing their homework.
Indeed,

11

Rideout, Foehr & Roberts (2010: 34) found that “nearly one in three (31%) 8-
to 18-yearolds

say that “most” of the time they are doing homework, they are also using

one medium or another—watching TV, texting, listening to music, and so on.
On the

other hand, about one in five (19%) say they “never” use other media while
doing their

homework, and 22% say they do so only “a little” of the time. These numbers
have

stayed relatively stable over the past five years.” However, earlier claims
that teens and

young adults associate with and through media in different ways as the older
generations,

and therefore are better at *multi-tasking*, seem not to be supported by new
findings. For

instance, research done at Stanford University concludes that it takes 15
minutes to fully

resume a serious mental task after answering an e-mail or IM (Iqbal &
Horvitz, 2007).


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