News

Paris/Amherst, May 12, 2010 (Jan Servaes*/Patchanee Malikhao**): This is the full version (in PDF) of the article The ’Always Connected’ Generation that appears in SIGNIS Media 2/2010: Reinventing Television.

Digital life in the age of nonstop connection is not easy, especially not for youngsters in the new Millennium. Research findings, such as in the recently released comprehensive reports by the Kaiser Family Foundation and Pew Foundation, highlight that media are among the most powerful forces in young people’s lives today. Eight- to twenty-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...