Online Audience - 2006 Annual Report

In the spring of 2005, the American Society of Newspaper Editors held its annual conference in Washington, D.C. Rupert Murdoch, managing director of News Corp., told the delegates about research by Merrill Brown for the Carnegie Corporation of New York that evaluated media patterns among Americans 18 to 34. Specifically, Murdoch spoke about the future of newspaper journalism and how the industry needed to adapt in order to stay relevant to those even younger — teenagers and pre-teens — whom he referred to as “digital natives”:

“The challenge, however, is to deliver that news in ways consumers want to receive it. Before we can apply our competitive advantages, we have to free our minds of our prejudices and predispositions, and start thinking like our newest consumers. In short, we have to answer this fundamental question: what do we – a bunch of digital immigrants — need to do to be relevant to the digital natives?”28

There has been a lot of discussion of those digital natives, but how do they use media? In this year’s annual report, we have decided to expand our understanding of young people and the future of the Web to an even younger cohort, those 8 to 18 years old.

The Kaiser Family Foundation survey discussed earlier examined daily media consumption habits. In short, this study suggests this is a generation that still watches a lot of television, reads considerably less, and consumes a great deal of interactive media. Television is the most dominant media platform for these young Americans, with more than 8 in 10 watching for more than three hours on any given day. But only 6% of that viewing time was allocated to the news.

Meanwhile, these young people are spending very little time with the print medium outside of school or work. According to the study, “no single print medium garners attention from as many as 50% of kids, and fewer than 20% read for pleasure for more than an hour daily.” Just 43 minutes a day outside of school were spent on reading all print materials, and only six of those were devoted to newspapers.

Computer use outside of school and work was higher than print consumption and appeared to be growing. Children 8 to 18 spent over an hour a day with computers, more than doubling the 27 minutes a day reported in 1999, according to the study. Playing games was the most frequent activity; visiting Web sites ranked second.29

With all the obvious caveats about predicting the future, the findings have some potentially major implications. Unless habits change as these children become adults, the findings portend some significant changes in who will thrive and who will suffer online.

The overall trend appears to be an acceleration toward more visual, digital and interactive media platforms and further away from those with their history in print.