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Media Habits Are Changing Rapidly For Young Adults, Making Ad Targeting More Challenging

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Ted Sarandos, chief content officer of Netflix Inc., says Squid Games could become the biggest show ... [+] ever on the streaming provider. The show's popularity has been driven by young females. Photographer: Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg

Media habits have undergone a sweeping change driven by streaming content and other digital media platforms, especially among younger age groups. As media continues to fragment, developing a successful strategy is becoming a more challenging task with each passing year.

Despite the fragmentation and the challenge of reaching young adults, many advertisers continue to market to this demographic, since young adults have a greater lifetime value as a consumer than older demographics. Hence, marketers continue to pay a premium ad rate to reach them. although such new and better targeted opportunities such as addressable advertising and connected TV are becoming available.

In September, Attest released their third annual U.S. Media Consumption Report which highlighted a number of notable changes in media usage driven by digital platforms. For the Attest report, which also provided media consumption for older age groups, young adults (a.k.a. “Generation Z” were defined as adults 18-to-24. The survey questioned 2,000 respondents U.S. working age (18-to-65) consumers and was conducted in August 2021.

Social Media: Social media is more popular with younger adults than older adults. The Attest study found, on average, 59% of this age group spends 3+ hours each day on social media. TikTok is now the second most popular social media platform, slightly behind YouTube. Attest found, 60% of young adults visit TikTok daily (YouTube is at 61%). In just over five years since its launch TikTok has reached one billion monthly active users globally. In January 2018 TikTok had 54 million monthly active users worldwide. TikTok’s popularity grew notably during the pandemic, in the first quarter of 2020 the app had been downloaded 315 million times.

Both Instagram (56%) and Snapchat (52%) remain more popular with young adults than with older demographics. The same cannot be said for Facebook, only 28% of young adults visit Facebook daily, the lowest figure of any age group. For example, 57% of “Baby Boomers” (age 57 to 65) and 68% of “Generation X” (age 41 to 56) access Facebook daily.

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Gaming: Another popular online activity is gaming. According to the report on average a large majority (82%) of adults 18-to-24 play games each day with 21% responding they play for 1-2 hours every day. A popular source for gaming is the Amazon owned Twitch, 26% of young adults say they access the live streaming service at least once a week. In addition, gaming sites such as Fortnite have been expanding into other forms of entertainment such as concerts and video. With the popularity of gaming and TikTok, eMarketer forecasts time spent on mobile phones each day for total adults has grown from 2 hours and 25 minutes in 2018 to 3 hours and 19 minutes this year.

Video: When compared to older adults 18-to-24 are more likely to stream video content, 44% of young adults stream 3+ hours video content each day. (Millennials, age 25-to-40 are a close second at 43%.) When broken out by time spent, 29% said they are streaming 1-2 hours daily and 29% are streaming 3-4 hours each day. Another 15% watch a minimum of 5 hours of streaming content every day.

Netflix NFLX , by a wide margin, is the most popular video streaming platform among young adults, with 86% of 18-to-24 using the service (compared to 69% for total adults). Ranking a distant second in usage with Generation Z is Disney+ with 56%. (For older demographics Amazon Prime Video ranks second.) Drama and comedy are the two most frequently watched programming types among young adults, well ahead of reality shows.

Audio: “Generation Z” are more likely to stream music than older age groups. On an average day, 60% of adults 18-to-24 listen to online music and 18% say they listen a few times weekly. At 64%, Spotify is the most used streaming audio provider, followed by YouTube Music at 35%. Apple Music, at 33%, is more popular with young adults than older adult age groups. 37% of adults 18-to-24 say they listen to podcasts at least once a week, a figure second to Millennials at 45%.

Moreover, 11% say they listen to podcasts daily and 32% have said they have never listened to a podcast. Furthermore, 22% visit news websites, 17% read at least one magazine weekly (47% never read them) and 16% read a printed newspaper.

In addition, even before streaming, social media and gaming, young adults were lighter users of traditional media. The survey found 20% of adults 18-to-24 watch 1-2 hours of linear TV each day with 29% not watching any live TV. As for radio, 24% say they listen to radio several times a week and 19% listen daily.

Hence, adults 18-to-24 are digital natives and early adopters of new media opportunities. Younger adults are also fluid in their media consumption as attested by the popularity of TikTok and streaming video while Facebook and linear television has become passé for many.

Anjali Midha, founder & CEO of Diesel Labs , a predictive media analytics company, points out how tough it is to get the 'pulse' of Generation Z given the fragmentated media landscape. She cites the popularity of Squid Game, a South Korean fictional drama on Netflix. “Audience composition might explain the quick rise of Squid Game to the top,” said Midha. “Our analysis shows 68% of the Squid Game engaged audience is under 24 years old, a figure much higher than both Black Mirror (49% under 24) and Parasite (34% under 24). It’s clear that a large, younger cohort is driving much of the buzz, thanks in part to the avalanche of TikTok memes and Roblox activations focused on the games that appear in the show; both platforms have a strong younger user base. Interestingly, the Squid Game audience also over-indexes in engagement with gaming (+20%) versus the average audience, which is very timely given the recent news about Netflix exploring into the new content format.” Netflix’s Ted Sarandos acknowledges there’s a good chance Squid Game , which was launched on September 17, with little publicity, will become the streamer’s most watched show ever.

Outside of Netflix, Diesel Labs found the Squid Game audience had strong affinity for other younger and female skewing titles such as Genera+ion and Gossip Girl on HBO Max and Rodgers & Hammerstein's Cinderella, Black Is King and High School Musical: The Musical: The Series on Disney+.

According to a study from Futuri , adults 18-to-24 are spending an average of $37 per month on video and audio subscriptions that are often times ad free or with limited advertising opportunities. Therefore, new targeting opportunities such as addressable advertising, connected TV and social media platforms such as Instagram and TikTok have emerged.

Zach Rosenberg, Founder , Zach Rosenberg Consulting , Inc. notes, “This demographic is increasingly media savvy. They are not only aware, but critical of traditional advertising tactics. Brands need to invest more resources into less conventional marketing and brand channels such as customer service and social impact to build trust in ways that matter to this audience.” Diesel Labs’ Midha adds, “The pressure on brands and agencies to innovate in a constantly changing environment is immense.”

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The changing news habits and attitudes of younger audiences

In 2019, the Digital News Report looked at how young people get their news , 1 finding stark differences in news consumption and behaviours among younger people, including a greater reliance on digital and social media and a weaker identification with and loyalty to news brands compared with older groups. Three years later, we now turn our attention to how young people’s news habits and attitudes have changed amid rising concerns about news distrust and avoidance, increasing public attention to social issues such as climate change and social justice, and the growth of newer platforms such as TikTok and Telegram.

Here, we aim to unpack these new behaviours as well as to dismantle some broad narratives of ‘young people’. Instead, we consider how social natives (18–24s) – who largely grew up in the world of the social, participatory web – differ meaningfully from digital natives (25–34s) – who largely grew up in the information age but before the rise of social networks – when it comes to news access, formats, and attitudes. 2 These groups are critical audiences for publishers and journalists around the world, and for the sustainability of the news, but are increasingly hard to reach and may require different strategies to engage them.

In this chapter, we supplement our survey data with quotes drawn from qualitative research conducted by the market research agency Craft with 72 young people (aged 18–30) in Brazil, the UK, and the US. 3

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The role of social media in young people’s news behaviours

Since the Digital News Report began tracking respondents’ main source of news, social networks have steadily replaced news websites as a primary source for younger audiences overall, with 39% of social natives (18–24s) across 12 markets now using social media as their main source of news, compared with 34% who prefer to go direct to a news website or app. We also find that social natives are far more likely to access news using ‘side-door’ sources such as social media, aggregator sites, and search engines than older groups.

The social media landscape continues to evolve dramatically, with new social networks like TikTok entering the field as well as existing platforms like Instagram and Telegram gaining markedly in popularity among young audiences. As social natives shift their attention away from Facebook (or in many cases never really start using it), more visually focused platforms such as Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube have become increasingly popular for news among this group. Use of TikTok for news has increased fivefold among 18–24s across all markets over just three years, from 3% in 2020 to 15% in 2022, while YouTube is increasingly popular among young people in Eastern Europe, Asia-Pacific, and Latin America.

And while 25–34s have largely embraced many of the same networks as social natives in their daily lives and news habits, they have remained much more loyal to Facebook (9pp higher for news than social natives) – the network this cohort largely grew up with – and have been slower to move to new networks like TikTok (5pp lower for news than social natives).

What makes these networks so appealing to some younger audiences? Qualitative interviews reveal that they are drawn to the informal, entertaining style of visual media (and particularly online video) platforms – describing it as more personalised and diverse than TV, as a resource for rapidly changing events such as the Russia–Ukraine conflict, and as a venue for niche interests, from pop culture to travel to health and well-being.

However, the popularity of online video does not mean text- and audio-based formats don’t still have a big role to play in young people’s news habits. Under 35s still largely say they prefer to mostly read (58%) rather than mostly watch (15%) news – particularly, as our qualitative research finds, when looking for live updates and summaries or when keeping up with what is happening on a ‘need to know’ basis. Some say they seek out a mix of text and video content to better understand information. Others, particularly in Asia-Pacific and Latin American markets, are drawn to audio-based formats like podcasts that allow users to multitask while they listen. There is not a one-size-fits-all approach or medium through which newsrooms can attract younger audiences.

Why younger audiences avoid news

And yet, as more news outlets and formats compete for audiences’ time and attention, we continue to see longer-term falls in interest and trust in news across age groups and markets – particularly among younger audiences. Under 35s are the lowest-trusting age groups, with only a third (37%) of both 18–24s and 25–34s across all markets saying they trust most news most of the time, compared with nearly half of those 55 and older (47%). Young people also increasingly choose to avoid the news, with substantial rises in avoidance among social natives since we last asked this question in 2019. Across all markets, around four in ten under 35s often or sometimes avoid the news now, compared with a third (36%) of those 35 and older.

Why is this happening? Most often, younger audiences (under 35) say the news has a negative effect on their mood (34%) and, most recently, that there is too much news coverage of topics like politics or Coronavirus (39%). In particular, the longstanding criticism of the depressing or overwhelming nature of news persists among young people. For instance, in the UK, two-thirds (64%) of news avoiders under 35 say the news brings down their mood. Our qualitative research participants described forming habits of avoiding this negativity.

Young people, particularly digital natives (27%), also at times avoid the news because they perceive it as biased or untrustworthy. As under 35s grew up in the digital age and have been socialised by older generations to be critical of the information they consume, our qualitative research suggests they take a particularly sceptical approach to all information and often question the ‘agenda’ of purveyors of news. In this sense, mainstream news brands are not inherently more valued for impartiality by some young people, and their wariness of bias at times pushes them away from consuming news altogether.

Yet many young people are not necessarily avoiding all news. In fact, many of them are selectively avoiding topics like politics and the Coronavirus specifically. As the Executive Summary notes, these patterns of selective news avoidance are not limited to younger audiences. But our qualitative research suggests that, among these groups, perceptions of political news are intrinsically tied to other themes of news avoidance: beliefs that it is particularly negative, that there is nothing they can do with the information, or that it is less trustworthy than other forms of news. Rather than simply avoiding news, there is ‘news to be avoided’.

What is news to young people?

These perceptions of too much newsroom attention going towards topics like politics and Coronavirus also reflect younger audiences’ broader desire for diverse news agendas, voices, and perspectives. As we discuss throughout this report, young people – particularly 18–24s – have different attitudes toward how the news is practised: they are more likely than older groups to believe media organisations should take a stand on issues like climate change and to think journalists should be free to express their personal views on social media.

On top of that, many young people have a wider definition of what news is . As our qualitative research reveals, younger audiences often distinguish between ‘ the news’ as the narrow, traditional agenda of politics and current affairs and ‘news’ as a much wider umbrella encompassing topics like sports, entertainment, celebrity gossip, culture, and science. This is reflected, for instance, in the examples of ‘news’ our interview participants shared: from stories about the world’s biggest strawberry to pollution on local beaches to the latest episode of Big Brother .

Given that young people are generally less interested in news and access it less frequently than older audiences, it is not surprising that under 35s express lower interest in most news topics generally. But they are particularly less likely to be interested in what they consider to be ‘the news’ – traditional beats like politics, international, and crime news – and tend to be less inclined to consume Coronavirus coverage. Instead, under 35s are more likely to be interested in ‘softer’ news topics: entertainment and celebrity news (33% interested), culture and arts news (37%), and education news (34%).

Even many of the types of news often deemed ‘young’ topics – for instance, mental health and wellness, environment and climate change news, and fun news or satire – do not necessarily translate into greater interest among all young people across all markets (or at least, interest in news, specifically, about these topics). Younger audiences on average don’t have much higher interest than older audiences in news on social justice issues, for instance, though this interest varies dramatically by market. Interest in social justice news is nine percentage points higher among under 35s than those 35 and older in the UK, on a par across both groups in Brazil, and seven percentage points lower among under 35s in Germany. As we discuss in a later section, those 35 and older are also more likely than younger people to say they are interested in environment and climate change news.

Motivations to access news

This year, we also asked about why people personally choose to keep up with the news. All age groups see the news as equally important for learning new things, but news users under 35 are slightly more motivated than older groups by how entertaining the news is and how sharable it is, and they are slightly less motivated than older groups by a sense of duty to stay informed of news or by its personal usefulness to them.

However, the extent to which young people feel a sense of duty to consume news looks very different across countries – for instance, with huge gaps between those under versus over 35 in Brazil and the US but very small gaps by age in France and Japan. And in the UK, a sense of duty to be informed and feeling the news helps them learn new things are tied for the top motivation for consuming news among under 35s. Together with insights from our qualitative research, this suggests that young audiences engage in a sort of mix-and-match of motivations depending on their interests as well as the types of content they are thinking of or seeking out.

Conclusions

As the digital media environment rapidly evolves and more young adults who grew up with social media enter our sample, key differences among younger news audiences continue to crystallise. The point here is not simply that some of young people’s behaviours and preferences are different from those of older people. They long have been. It is that the differences seem to be growing, even between social natives and digital natives. Many of these shifts in behaviours are so fundamental that they appear unlikely to be reversed with time. The youngest cohort represents a more casual, less loyal news user. Social natives’ reliance on social media and weak connection with brands make it harder for media organisations to attract and engage them.

At the same time, younger audiences are also particularly suspicious and less trusting of all information. This, along with the often-depressing nature of news and the overwhelming amount of information they encounter in their daily lives, makes young people sceptical of news organisations’ agendas and increasingly likely to avoid the news – or at least certain types of news. While young people do not all have the same needs, many are looking for more diverse voices and perspectives and for stories that don’t depress and upset them.

Social natives in particular have increasingly moved towards new visual social networks – but they are not simply all TikTokers, nor do they all have limited attention spans when it comes to serious information. Young people like a range of formats and media, from text to video to audio, and are drawn to information that is curated for them. There will continue to be a place for text, video, audio, and still imagery – sometimes all in one piece of content. And there will be a place for both the serious, impartial tones of traditional media and more casual, entertaining, or advocacy-centred approaches to covering news.

Younger audiences’ definitions of what news is are also wider. Recognising the variety of preferences and tastes that exist within an incredibly diverse cohort presents a new set of challenges for media organisations. But one route to increased relevance for news brands may lie in broadening their appeal – connecting with the topics young people care about, developing multimedia and platform-specific content, and aligning content and tone with format – rather than entirely replacing what they already do or expecting young people to eventually come around to what has always been done. At times, this includes continuing with what news brands currently offer, some of which is highly valued by younger audiences. In moments when they feel they ‘need to know’ what is happening – as with COVID-19 and the Russia–Ukraine conflict – young people still want news brands to be there.

1 https://www.digitalnewsreport.org/survey/2019/how-younger-generations-consume-news-differently/ ↩

2 Because these age ranges are not entirely representative of the generational cohorts of ‘Gen Y’ and ‘Gen Z’, there is no clear consensus on what year of birth separates the two generations, and to avoid broad generational claims, we instead distinguish digital natives (25–34s) from social natives (18–24s). ↩

3 This work included digital tasks, blogging, and vlogging, and in-depth interviews with 24 participants per country in February–March 2022. Participants represented a range of demographic traits, life stages, and news habits. You can find the full report on the findings of this qualitative study here . ↩

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Social Media Use in 2021

A majority of Americans say they use YouTube and Facebook, while use of Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok is especially common among adults under 30.

Table of contents.

Acknowledgments
Methodology

To better understand Americans’ use of social media, online platforms and messaging apps, Pew Research Center surveyed 1,502 U.S. adults from Jan. 25 to Feb. 8, 2021, by cellphone and landline phone. The survey was conducted by interviewers under the direction of Abt Associates and is weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population by gender, race, ethnicity, education and other categories. Here are the questions used for this report , along with responses, and its methodology .

Despite a string of controversies and the public’s relatively negative sentiments about aspects of social media, roughly seven-in-ten Americans say they ever use any kind of social media site – a share that has remained relatively stable over the past five years, according to a new Pew Research Center survey of U.S. adults.

Growing share of Americans say they use YouTube; Facebook remains one of the most widely used online platforms among U.S. adults

Beyond the general question of overall social media use, the survey also covers use of individual sites and apps. YouTube and Facebook continue to dominate the online landscape, with 81% and 69%, respectively, reporting ever using these sites. And YouTube and Reddit were the only two platforms measured that saw statistically significant growth since 2019 , when the Center last polled on this topic via a phone survey.

When it comes to the other platforms in the survey, 40% of adults say they ever use Instagram and about three-in-ten report using Pinterest or LinkedIn. One-quarter say they use Snapchat, and similar shares report being users of Twitter or WhatsApp. TikTok – an app for sharing short videos – is used by 21% of Americans, while 13% say they use the neighborhood-focused platform Nextdoor.

Even as other platforms do not nearly match the overall reach of YouTube or Facebook, there are certain sites or apps, most notably Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok, that have an especially strong following among young adults. In fact, a majority of 18- to 29-year-olds say they use Instagram (71%) or Snapchat (65%), while roughly half say the same for TikTok.

These findings come from a nationally representative survey of 1,502 U.S. adults conducted via telephone Jan. 25-Feb.8, 2021.

With the exception of YouTube and Reddit, most platforms show little growth since 2019

YouTube is the most commonly used online platform asked about in this survey, and there’s evidence that its reach is growing. Fully 81% of Americans say they ever use the video-sharing site, up from 73% in 2019. Reddit was the only other platform polled about that experienced statistically significant growth during this time period – increasing from 11% in 2019 to 18% today.

Facebook’s growth has leveled off over the last five years, but it remains one of the most widely used social media sites among adults in the United States: 69% of adults today say they ever use the site, equaling the share who said this two years prior.

Similarly, the respective shares of Americans who report using Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Snapchat, Twitter and WhatsApp are statistically unchanged since 2019 . This represents a broader trend that extends beyond the past two years in which the rapid adoption of most of these sites and apps seen in the last decade has slowed. (This was the first year the Center asked about TikTok via a phone poll and the first time it has surveyed about Nextdoor.)

Adults under 30 stand out for their use of Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok

When asked about their social media use more broadly – rather than their use of specific platforms – 72% of Americans say they ever use social media sites.

In a pattern consistent with past Center studies on social media use, there are some stark age differences. Some 84% of adults ages 18 to 29 say they ever use any social media sites, which is similar to the share of those ages 30 to 49 who say this (81%). By comparison, a somewhat smaller share of those ages 50 to 64 (73%) say they use social media sites, while fewer than half of those 65 and older (45%) report doing this.

These age differences generally extend to use of specific platforms, with younger Americans being more likely than their older counterparts to use these sites – though the gaps between younger and older Americans vary across platforms.

Age gaps in Snapchat, Instagram use are particularly wide, less so for Facebook

Majorities of 18- to 29-year-olds say they use Instagram or Snapchat and about half say they use TikTok, with those on the younger end of this cohort – ages 18 to 24 – being especially likely to report using Instagram (76%), Snapchat (75%) or TikTok (55%). 1 These shares stand in stark contrast to those in older age groups. For instance, while 65% of adults ages 18 to 29 say they use Snapchat, just 2% of those 65 and older report using the app – a difference of 63 percentage points.

Additionally, a vast majority of adults under the age of 65 say they use YouTube. Fully 95% of those 18 to 29 say they use the platform, along with 91% of those 30 to 49 and 83% of adults 50 to 64. However, this share drops substantially – to 49% – among those 65 and older.

By comparison, age gaps between the youngest and oldest Americans are narrower for Facebook. Fully 70% of those ages 18 to 29 say they use the platform, and those shares are statistically the same for those ages 30 to 49 (77%) or ages 50 to 64 (73%). Half of those 65 and older say they use the site – making Facebook and YouTube the two most used platforms among this older population.

Other sites and apps stand out for their demographic differences:

Instagram: About half of Hispanic (52%) and Black Americans (49%) say they use the platform, compared with smaller shares of White Americans (35%) who say the same. 2
WhatsApp: Hispanic Americans (46%) are far more likely to say they use WhatsApp than Black (23%) or White Americans (16%). Hispanics also stood out for their WhatsApp use in the Center’s previous surveys on this topic.
LinkedIn: Those with higher levels of education are again more likely than those with lower levels of educational attainment to report being LinkedIn users. Roughly half of adults who have a bachelor’s or advanced degree (51%) say they use LinkedIn, compared with smaller shares of those with some college experience (28%) and those with a high school diploma or less (10%).
Pinterest: Women continue to be far more likely than men to say they use Pinterest when compared with male counterparts, by a difference of 30 points (46% vs. 16%).
Nextdoor: There are large differences in use of this platform by community type. Adults living in urban (17%) or suburban (14%) areas are more likely to say they use Nextdoor. Just 2% of rural Americans report using the site.

Use of online platforms, apps varies – sometimes widely – by demographic group

A majority of Facebook, Snapchat and Instagram users say they visit these platforms on a daily basis

Seven-in-ten Facebook users say they visit site daily

While there has been much written about Americans’ changing relationship with Facebook , its users remain quite active on the platform. Seven-in-ten Facebook users say they use the site daily, including 49% who say they use the site several times a day. (These figures are statistically unchanged from those reported in the Center’s 2019 survey about social media use.)

Smaller shares – though still a majority – of Snapchat or Instagram users report visiting these respective platforms daily (59% for both). And being active on these sites is especially common for younger users. For instance, 71% of Snapchat users ages 18 to 29 say they use the app daily, including six-in-ten who say they do this multiple times a day. The pattern is similar for Instagram: 73% of 18- to 29-year-old Instagram users say they visit the site every day, with roughly half (53%) reporting they do so several times per day.

YouTube is used daily by 54% if its users, with 36% saying they visit the site several times a day. By comparison, Twitter is used less frequently, with fewer than half of its users (46%) saying they visit the site daily.

Due to a limited sample size, figures for those ages 25 to 29 cannot be reported on separately. ↩
There were not enough Asian American respondents in the sample to be broken out into a separate analysis. As always, their responses are incorporated into the general population figures throughout this report. ↩

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ABOUT PEW RESEARCH CENTER Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research. Pew Research Center does not take policy positions. It is a subsidiary of The Pew Charitable Trusts .

Introduction: Media Use and Everyday Life in Digital Societies

Media Use in Digital Everyday Life

ISBN : 978-1-80262-386-4 , eISBN : 978-1-80262-383-3

Publication date: 20 February 2023

This chapter presents the research questions, approaches, and arguments of the book, asking how our everyday lives with media have changed after the smartphone. I introduce the topic of media use in everyday life as an empirical, methodological, and theoretical research interest, and argue for its continued centrality to our digital society today, accentuated by datafication. I discuss how the analytical concepts of media repertories and public connection can inform research into media use in everyday life, and what it means that our societies and user practices are becoming more digital. The main argument of the book is that digital media transform our navigation across the domains of everyday life by blurring boundaries, intensifying dilemmas, and affecting our sense of connection to communities and people around us. The chapter concludes by presenting the structure of the rest of the book, where these arguments will be substantiated in analysis of media use an ordinary day, media use in life phase transitions, and media use when ordinary life is disrupted.

Ytre-Arne, B. (2023), "Introduction: Media Use and Everyday Life in Digital Societies", Media Use in Digital Everyday Life , Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 1-16. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-80262-383-320231001

Emerald Publishing Limited

Published by Emerald Publishing Limited. This work is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this book (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this licence may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode .

Can you remember your first smartphone, and did it change your life? I bought my first smartphone in the early summer of 2011, right before the birth of my first child. I can safely say that life was never the same again. Although the new phone was hardly the most significant change that happened, it became part of how I reconfigured everyday life.

My coincidental timing of these events might be a personal particularity, but the early 2010s, only a little more than a decade ago, was a period in which smartphones became part of everyday life for lots of people. This happened in Norway where I live, and in other countries in the Global North, soon followed by broader proliferation worldwide (Avle et al., 2020). In 2021, it was estimated that more than 90 per cent of people had smartphone access in a growing number of countries around the globe (Deloitte, 2021). ‘Smartphones changed everything’, wrote the Wall Street Journal in 2020: ‘smartphones upended every element of society during the last decade, from dating to dinner parties, travel to politics. This is just the beginning’ (Kitchen, 9.9.2020). But while all of this was happening, people lived their lives, using smartphones along with other media old and new, interwoven with what was going on in their lives, and in the world around them.

This book explores the role of media in our everyday lives in digital societies, after the proliferation of smartphones and in conditions of ubiquitous connectivity. I analyze everyday media use across platforms, content types and modes of communication, taking the perspective of how we live our lives with media – how we manage plans and practicalities, keep in touch with friends and family, seek information and entertainment, work and learn, take part in shared experiences, and connect to our social lifeworlds. We might do all of this in the space of one single day, and we might experience such a day as ‘ordinary’ – just normal everyday life. But media technologies are also part of our less ordinary days, important to how we manage life-changing transitions and special events in our personal lives, and to how we relate to local communities, political processes or global events. We use media to connect to each other, and to society – throughout an ordinary day, across the life course, and in times of disruption.

The smartphone is emblematic of how our everyday lives with media are changing in a digital and hyper-connected society, and as such it is essential to the topic of this book. A central question I discuss is what it means that most of us now have a smartphone to reach for, from where we are and what we are doing, to manage multiple aspects of our daily lives: A mobile, flexible device we rely on to communicate, find information, entertain and assist us, often used in combination with other media, but also a device that enables tracking and surveillance of our movements and engagements, informing feedback loops based on our personal data. How has digital media use in everyday life changed after the smartphone?

To answer these questions, I draw on classic scholarship on media and communication technologies in everyday life (Baym, 2015; Silverstone, 1994), and on recent analysis of digital ambivalence and disconnection (Syvertsen, 2020). With a user perspective, I situate smartphones and other kinds of digital platforms as part of broader media repertoires (Hasebrink & Hepp, 2017), with an interest in the totality and internal relationships of any kind of media that people use and find meaningful in their everyday lives. I further understand everyday media use as central to public connection (Couldry et al., 2010), to how we orient ourselves to a world beyond our private concerns.

The book provides an updated perspective on media in everyday life after digital media has become increasingly embedded and ingrained in society. A purpose for the book is to fill a gap between classic (but old) discussions on everyday media use, and recent (but sometimes narrowly focused) studies of new technologies. Our understandings of everyday media use are still shaped by theories developed before the internet, before digital and social and mobile media. This book highlights rather than discards these understandings, but moves forward in tackling dilemmas of technological transformations, and by considering recent crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic. I untangle how media becomes meaningful to us in the everyday, connecting us to each other and to communities and publics. The book offers empirical, methodological and theoretical insight on media use in digital everyday life.

Why Everyday Life?

‘Everyday life’ is one of those concepts that everyone understands, but which is still difficult to define. The term is not internal jargon belonging to a particular research field, but instead recognizable across a range of contexts – we might even describe it as an ‘everyday’ term. One of the early ideas behind this book was to answer the questions: ‘But what do you mean by everyday life?’ and further ‘Why do you [meaning media use researchers] go on about everyday life?’. These are good questions. Let us start with the latter: Why everyday life? More precisely, why would someone interested in media use find it important to refer to everyday life for contextualization?

In media and communication studies, interest in everyday life has a long history. The idea of everyday life has been central to approaches and research interests in cultural studies (Gray, 2002; Morley, 1992), media phenomenology (Pink & Leder Mackley, 2013; Scannell, 1995) or media ethnography (Hermes, 1995; Radway, 1984). The term has been particularly central to theories of domestication (Haddon, 2016; Silverstone et al., 2021) focused on processes of gradually integrating media technologies in the home. Roger Silverstone wrote a classic volume on Television and everyday life (Silverstone, 1994), arguing that in order to move past debates on television as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ and actually understand what it is, we have to consider television as embedded in tensions and dynamics of everyday life. Shaun Moores (2000) applied everyday life as a framework for understanding the historical development of broadcast media, and Maria Bakardjieva (2005) analyzed the domestication of computers and internet technologies in everyday life. Elizabeth Bird (2003) wrote The Audience in Everyday Life to argue for the relevance of ethnographic methods to understand our media-saturated reality, while Tim Markham (2017) wrote an introductory textbook titled Media and Everyday Life to present topics and thinkers in media studies through their relevance to daily life.

All of the above are books on media with ‘everyday life’ in the title. Moreover, the term keeps popping up in journal articles on a variety of topics regarding media use: A comparative study of why people read print newspapers in the digital age refer to how different media are integrated into everyday life (Boczkowski et al., 2021), while a study of people who prefer online media at home find that digital alternatives are perceived to be better integrated into domestic everyday life (Müller, 2020). In analysis of how and why we follow news, the idea of the everyday provides a way of situating ordinary users at the centre of attention, by discussing everyday news use (Groot Kormelink & Costera Meijer, 2019) or everyday public connection (Swart et al., 2017). In debates about datafication and emergent technologies, the notion of the everyday is used to highlight human and social experiences with for instance self-tracking (Lomborg & Frandsen, 2016), smart homes (Hine, 2020) or algorithmic media (Willson, 2017).

What do these different contributions have in common? They refer to everyday life to signal a position, because referencing ‘everyday life’ holds some empirical, methodological or theoretical implications. The term can be invoked to answer the ‘so what’-question: A compelling reason for why we need to study media at all is its relevance to everyday life (Silverstone, 1999). Today we can adapt this argument to why we need to study the smartphone – it is part of everyday life. Through such statements, we frame the smartphone as a technology and research topic that is recognizable and relevant to experiences and dilemmas each of us encounter. The smartphone has transformed society, but it has done so through our everyday interactions.

Similarly: Why does it matter if people read international news or look at cat videos online, watch Netflix or Linear TV, listen to music on Spotify or prefer vinyl records? If you are interested in media business models or media policies, and find the choices users make a bit puzzling, you might need to look into motivations and contexts in everyday life to gain a deeper understanding of what goes on. Attention to everyday contexts can both complicate and enhance insights gained from other types of tracking and measurements of media use (Groot Kormelink & Costera Meijer, 2020). To understand new technologies, or connect critiques of these phenomena to people’s experiences, everyday life is an essential framework: It is easier to grasp the idea of ‘the Internet of Things’ (Bunz & Meikle, 2018) as having to do with whether your refrigerator needs internet connection, than through concepts such as machine learning or smart sensors.

Sometimes the position signalled by referring to everyday life is explicitly normative. A key example is the debate on everyday experiences with datafication, or ‘the quantification of human life through digital information, very often for economic value’ (Mejias & Couldry, 2019). The idea of so-called ‘big data’ as more precise or valuable has been met with critical questions (Boyd & Crawford, 2012), and with concern for how audience engagement can be harvested and utilized for opaque purposes (Ytre-Arne & Das, 2020). In criticizing these developments, the notion of ‘everyday life’ is central to put the human experience of living in datafied conditions front and centre (Kennedy & Hill, 2018), or to focus on the people rather than systems (Livingstone, 2019). This interest further corresponds to feminist (D’Ignazio & Klein, 2020) and postcolonial critiques (Milan & Treré, 2019) of datafication and power.

We can also signal analytical and methodological interests by referring to everyday life: The term is used to prioritize context over generalizability, and ordinary user perspectives and experiences over media professionals and institutions. This could imply attention to small acts of engagement in social media (Picone et al., 2019), and inclusion of seemingly mundane practices of media use (Hermes, 1995; Sandvik et al., 2016). An everyday life perspective is a backdrop for cross-media research (Lomborg & Mortensen, 2017; Schrøder, 2011) rather than pre-selecting which media to study based on the researchers’ preconceived notions of what matters. Qualitative researchers and ethnographers also draw on ‘everyday life’ as a term that points towards preferred methods: Talking to people about a day in the life (del Rio Carral, 2014), ‘capturing life as it is narrated’ (Kaun, 2010) with diary methods, and exploring experiences and reflections in informants’ own words. Some quantitative studies of media use also use the term (Hovden & Rosenlund, 2021) and research on everyday media repertoires can combine qualitative and quantitative approaches (Hasebrink & Hepp, 2017).

I am also someone who often explain and position my key research interests through the notion of everyday life. A long-running interest in everyday life has informed my preference for qualitative and user-focused methods, in the studies I draw on in this book and in other projects. I have used the term ‘everyday life’ in the title of publications (Moe & Ytre-Arne, 2021; Ytre-Arne, 2012), and also explored how media use changes with biographical disruption to everyday routines (Ytre-Arne, 2019) or discussed audience agency in everyday encounters with digital and datafied media (Ytre-Arne & Das, 2020; Ytre-Arne & Moe, 2021a). For me, the everyday signals a perspective on why and how to study media use: it is important because it is part of daily life, it is interesting because everyday life is diverse and meaningful, and it is impossible to be done with because it changes constantly. I do not think there is any necessary contradiction between an everyday perspective versus a societal or political perspective on media use – instead, everyday life is where political dimensions of media are experienced, interpreted, and acted upon. This point runs as an undercurrent through the analyses of this book and is highlighted in the concluding chapter.

What is Everyday Life?

We have established that media are part of everyday life, and that research on media use is interested in everyday life. That is not to say that definitions everyday life abound in the literature referenced above, or in the field at large. Even classic contributions observe that commenting on the topic of everyday life might seem simplistic (e.g. Silverstone, 1994, p. 19). There is considerable variation in how precisely or extensively the concept is explained: Some works develop distinct philosophical understandings (e.g. Bakardijeva in Sandvik et al., 2016), or ground the term in substantial discussion of different theoretical positions (e.g. Cavalcante et al., 2017). Some authors define the term and how it connects to methodological and analytical frameworks in their studies). Others explain adjacent concepts to the everyday, such as the study mentioned above of why people still read print newspapers (Boczkowski et al., 2021), which draws on theories of ritualization, sociality and cultural contexts.

Nevertheless, everyday life is theorized in disciplines from human geography (Holloway & Hubbard, 2001) to psychology (Schraube & Højholt, 2016). Some central philosophical contributions are Henri Lefebvre’s Critique of Everyday Life (1947), which formulates a Marxist-inspired argument about the importance of this sphere of human conduct in the face of capitalism and technological change, and Michel De Certeau’s The Practice of Everyday Life (1984) which emphasizes the concept of potentially subversive tactics in people’s navigation through daily life. Another key work is The Structures of the Lifeworld (Schutz & Luckmann, 1973) which formulates Alfred Schutz’ theory of the lifeworld in which everyday life is enacted, including spatial, temporal and social dimensions, and how we move through ‘zones of operation’ where people and places beyond our immediate surroundings are yet within ‘restorable reach’ to us, through the familiarity or routines in the everyday which we take for granted (1973). This understanding has been particularly important to phenomenological and sociological studies of media and technologies in everyday life.

Such philosophical works on everyday life are briefly to comprehensively referenced in studies of everyday media use, providing a background understanding that is made more or less explicit. For instance, Herman Bausinger (1984) set out to discuss the role of media in daily living, drawing on Schutz and a growing empirical as well as philosophical interest in everyday life as a research topic. He observed that media are not used in isolation from one another or from personal relationships. Making an example of the intricate details of negotiating media use in family dynamics at home, he argued that ‘The media are an integral part of the way the everyday is conducted’ (Bausinger, 1984, p. 349) and made several points that have later been picked up in discussions of media ensembles (Hasebrink & Hepp, 2017) and of media use as mundane but yet meaningful in everyday settings (Hermes, 1995; Sandvik et al., 2016). In her study of early internet use at home, Marija Bakardjieva (Bakardjieva, 2005) provides a thorough theoretical discussion of how Scuhtz and Lefebvre’s theories relate to communication technologies, developing the idea of a critical phenomenology to understand users as well as systems.

Roger Silverstone’s work on everyday life also references Schutz’ understanding of the lifeworld, and further invokes Anthony Giddens’ sociology of the self in a discussion of whether this lifeworld is different in conditions of late modernity (Silverstone, 1993). Silverstone references debates about order and chaos in a world of complex societal issues and new communication systems, juxtaposed with an observation that television is something we have seemingly come to take for granted, as a technology and social phenomenon and as part of our everyday lives. Connecting these threads, Silverstone emphasizes the significance of routines and familiarity in in keeping the chaos of the world at bay and upholding a sense of order:

Routines, rituals, traditions, myths, these are the stuff of social order and everyday life. Within the familiar and taken for granted, as well as through the heightened and dramatic, our lives take shape and within those shapes, spatially and temporarily grounded and signified, we attempt to go about our business, avoiding or managing, for the most part, the traumas and the catastrophes that threaten to disturb our peace and sanity. (Silverstone, 1994, p. 18)

In this understanding, everyday habits institute and reaffirm a sense of ontological security , a concept Giddens applies to describe feelings of trust and continuity in people’s experience of the world and sense of self, central to how people position themselves in the world and give meaning to life (Giddens, 1991). Ontological security is also a key concept in Annette Markham’s more recent theory of digital communication as echolocation, emphasizing ping-backs when we send out messages through digital media, and in return have our continued existence in the world confirmed (Markham, 2021). Her discussion underlines how feelings of being connected or disconnected through digital media can harbour existential anxieties related to the confirmation of the self.

Across these theories of everyday life, some key dimensions stand out. Everyday life has to do with the organization of time (temporal dimensions), space (spatial dimensions), and people and activities (social dimensions) through which we make meaning and relate to the word and our position in it (existential dimensions). I draw on these dimensions to further situate media use in everyday life, emphasizing how we use media for routinized navigation across social domains.

Situating Media Use in Everyday Life

To understand media use – here applied as an umbrella term for all kinds of relationships and engagements with media and communication technologies – we need to situate media use as part of everyday life, in people’s lifeworlds. Drawing on the ideas introduced above, of familiarity and routines, and of spatial, temporal, social and existential dimensions, we can envision many different roles and positions for media. I am particularly interested in how we use media to orient ourselves as we move through our everyday lives, as part of what I call routinized navigation across social domains . What does this mean, exactly?

Everyday media use is routinized because we do not invent it from scratch – we rely on repeated actions that we are familiar with, regarding media use as well as other aspects of everyday living. Imagine waking up in the morning and not repeating anything you have done before – instead of making the same type of coffee and checking the same apps on your smartphone. Like other habits and routines, familiar and repeated media use practices are particularly essential to the ontological security of everyday life emphasized by Silverstone, Markham and others. Habits are also a central concept in media and communication psychology (LaRose, 2010, 2015), and central to studies seeking to grasp user patterns over time or across demographics. We build everyday habits in many forms and around many activities – including media use.

Everyday life encompasses multiple social domains – such as work and family life – that are meaningful to us and that we engage with frequently, and that also form important contexts for how we use media. There are rich research literatures that explore meanings of media use in different social domains, for instance focused on life phases such as adolescence or experiences such as parenthood (e.g. Boyd, 2014; Das, 2019; Livingstone & Blum-Ross, 2020). Transitions between life phases, such as a student graduating or a worker retiring, are so significant because the social domains of our everyday lives change with these events. These social domains are essential to the meaning we find in life, making the conduct of everyday life an existential project. We engage with social domains in many ways – including media use and communication.

A specific interest I explore in this book is how we use media across and in-between social domains, for what I refer to as navigation : Everyday media use entails navigation across multiple social domains because an ordinary day can encompass an array of activities and locations, in which we enact different social roles with different people. Everyday life can be messy and disorganized, with too many things to juggle at once, or feel too fast- or slow-paced, but whether we have plans for everything or go with the flow, some form of coordination and navigation is required, both physically and metaphorically. We conduct such navigation in many ways – including media use and communication. Digital technologies have become fundamental to this navigation – practically and specifically, but also socially and existentially.

So, to summarize: We have already established that media are part of daily routines, and that such routines are essential to everyday life in. We can also discuss if and how the social domains of everyday life are mediated or mediatized, and how deep these processes run (Couldry & Hepp, 2017; Hepp, 2020). But my main interest in this book is how our navigation across the social domains of everyday life changes with digital media – how we use digital media to connect to different social domains, orient ourselves to what goes on there, coordinate activities and communicate across contexts. Media use is essential to the navigation of everyday life, and the role of media in this navigation holds implications for how we experience our lives as meaningful, for how we understand and situate ourselves in the world. How we conduct this navigation is changing with the digitalization and datafication of the media, particularly after the smartphone.

Analyzing Media Use in Everyday Life

The theories of everyday life that are most central to media and communication studies originate from an era of television, and the domestic sphere is the social domain that has received the most attention. Family dynamics and the spatiality of the home are central to analyses ranging from Morely’s discussion of who controls the remote control (Morley, 1992) to what happens when the people watching television also have tablets and computers (D’Heer & Courtois, 2016). However, we can no longer simply declare, as Silverstone could in his classic volume, that ‘Television is a domestic medium. It is watched at home. Ignored at home. Discussed at home’ (Silverstone, 1994, p. 24). Instead, streaming and mobile and social media makes a mess of the boundaries formerly established when living room locations and scheduled programming were organizing principles for watching television. Similarly, a question in earlier internet studies of whether and how people would actually want to make space for computers in their homes (Bakardjieva, 2005) is made more complicated not just by laptops and smartphones, but also by connective household devices and wearable technologies. The home is still important, but our navigation with media inside and beyond the home has changed.

A broader point is therefore that the proliferation of digital media has made it more difficult to make assumptions about how to situate media in everyday life, while media might be more important than ever to how we navigate across our daily lives. This also has implications for the analytical concepts and approaches we invoke to study everyday media use.

To analyze media in everyday life, it is possible to select a particular platform, medium, genre or media text, and look for its applications and meaning in everyday settings, similar to investigations into how the cultural role of television played out in people’s everyday lives. But to account for the increased potential for variation in everyday media use, it is more relevant to start with people and how we live our lives, and then explore how media matters. Much of the scholarship already discussed in this chapter argues for the value of less media-centric approaches to media studies – media might need to be de-centred in order to understand what it means. I will particularly draw on two conceptual approaches to situate media use in everyday life through a user perspective: Media repertoires and public connection.

Media repertoires is a concept intended to capture the totality and meaningful relations between media a person uses regularly (Hasebrink & Domeyer, 2012; Hasebrink & Hepp, 2017). Following the essential insight that ‘audiences are inherently cross-media’ (Schrøder, 2011), a key value of repertoire approaches is to focus less on singular experiences with reading The Guardian , watching Game of Thrones or using TikTok, and instead figure out how these or completely different elements are relative to each other in the context of a person’s everyday media use. Consequently, media repertoire approaches explore which media users have a routinized relationship with, how they prioritize between different possibilities, and how people compose and reflect upon the totality of their regular media use. Media repertoire research has moved from figuring out how to establish elements of repertoires towards growing interest in repertoires as dynamic and reflexive constructs, analyzing how they emerge, are maintained and change over time (Peters & Schrøder, 2018; Vandenplas et al., 2021; Vulpius et al., 2022; Ytre-Arne, 2019).

Public connection is a concept that describes people’s orientations to society, in a broad sense – how people connect to public life, politics, culture or community (Couldry et al., 2010; Nærland, 2019; Swart et al., 2017; Ytre-Arne & Moe, 2018). The advantage of a public connection approach – as opposed to a pre-determined focus on whether people follow hard news or traditional politics – is to explore more openly what issues people are interested in, and how they follow those interests, across but also beyond journalism (Couldry et al., 2010; Moe & Ytre-Arne, 2021). Media is important to public connection, but not the only means of societal orientation, and mediated public connection can take many forms. Joelle Swart and colleagues define public connection as ‘the various shared frames of reference that enable individuals to engage and participate in cultural, social, civic, and political networks in everyday life’ (Swart et al., 2017) and suggest that inclusiveness, constructiveness, relevance and engagement are dimensions in how media becomes meaningful in everyday life.

Both of these perspectives imply that there is no universal answer to when, how, or why media matters in everyday life – it is contextual and relative. Both perspectives are easily opened up to analysis of the heightened complexities that digitalization have brought to everyday media use. In this book, I draw on media repertoire approaches to analyze everyday media use from the perspective of individual users, and on the public connection concept to discuss how people connect to society through everyday media use.

A More Digital Everyday Life

A different way of situating media in everyday life is to ask if one shapes the other, and if so, which way around. A useful parallel can be found in debates on how digital technologies shape our social realities. Nancy Baym argues in Personal Connections in the Digital Age (2015) that perspectives such as technological determinism or social constructivism need a middle ground, and draws on theories about social shaping of technologies (and media domestication) to emphasize how we interact and negotiate with media technologies, over time and with tensions, in cultural and social contexts. A similar dynamic applies to media use in everyday life with advanced digital technologies. We can simultaneously consider how digital media use shapes everyday life, and how everyday life shapes digital media use.

Arguments for why digital media use shapes everyday life are not hard to come by. Social, mobile and digital media has transformed how people socialize, learn, work, relax, and conduct practical tasks, with the smartphone as a coordinating centre aggregating personal communication streams for multiple spheres of life. Scholars have framed the evolving role of social media and digital platforms as a culture of connectivity (van Dijck, 2013) or a digital environment in which we live our lives (Boczkowski & Mitchelstein, 2021). Digital anthropologist Daniel Miller theorizes the smartphone as a ‘transportable home’, arguing that we should regard it ‘less as a device we use, than as a place within which we now live’ (Miller, 2021). This metaphor allows us to think of the smartphone as a place where lots of different activities take place, from the mundane to the special, a place where we might invite others in or be alone. Some argue that we live in media (Deuze, 2012) or that the construction of reality itself is mediatized (Couldry & Hepp, 2017). With the datafication of society, practices and dilemmas of interacting with digital platforms, and of being tracked and surveilled as part of opaque power dynamics, become increasingly relevant across a range of everyday contexts and social domains (Das & Ytre-Arne, 2018; Dencik et al., 2017; Kennedy et al., 2015; Møller Hartley et al., 2021).

On the other hand, everyday life shapes digital media use. Media are not the only components of the lifeworld, following the understanding of it developed above, meaning that the everyday lives in which we use media are shaped by many other factors. Things happen, within or beyond our control: A series of planned, sudden, expected, accidental, incidental, repeated, extraordinary, small and big events have direct impact on how we live our lives and use media. A key interest for Giddens is how individuals reflexively work to integrate such events into coherent understandings of the self (Giddens, 1991). Likewise, different societal contexts, and differences in privileges and resources and freedoms to shape everyday life, pose restrictions as well as opportunities. Some of these contexts we can negotiate, some we might work to change over time, others appear beyond control.

A recent and striking example is the COVID-19 pandemic: It might be impossible to separate our experience of the event from the mediation of it, but it was a virus spreading across the globe and a series of counter-measures that impacted people’s lives, including uses of digital media, and that affected people differently and accentuated already established divides (e.g. Milan et al., 2020). The pandemic is an example of how norms for and meanings of media use are made visible in precarious situations, when established practices are uprooted by change. It illustrates how everyday circumstances have profound impact on media use and that there are severe inequalities affecting the current crisis as well as more long-term divides. These restrictions and inequalities also affect our uses of digital media to understand the changing world around us.

It has become impossible to imagine everyday life as we know it without digital media, while interest in what this fundamentally means is growing – as seen for instance in the debates on ubiquitous connectivity (van Dijck, 2013), deep mediatization (Couldry & Hepp, 2017) or digital disconnection (Bucher, 2020; Syvertsen, 2020). The growing scholarship on digital disconnection problematizes the meanings of connection and disconnection (e.g. Baym et al., 2020; Bucher, 2020; Kuntsman & Miyake, 2019), but the cultural resonance of digital detox also hinges on ideas of meaningful sociality and presence away from the digital. Empirical studies find that disconnecting users refer to more meaningful personal relations as a perceived benefit (e.g. Brennen, 2019; Pennington, 2020), while there is an abundance of arguments in media and communication studies against presumptions of digital communication as separate or inferior to other aspects of social life (Baym, 2015; Boyd, 2014; Fortunati, 2005).

So, when we say that everyday life is more digital than before, we might consider the existence and proliferation of relatively new devices such as the smartphone or various forms of connective technologies in our surroundings, or we might think of the ways in which social and digital media take part in how we constitute our identities and social relationships, and interact with each other at home, at work and in a range of everyday settings. This book takes a dynamic middle perspective similar to what Baym (2015) calls social shaping of technologies, and investigates experiences and dilemmas of media use in digital everyday life.

Whose Everyday Life?

Everyday lives are significantly different, but everyone has one. This makes media use in everyday life both a very inclusive topic and one that is riddled with unequal power positions. It is problematic to write about how ‘we’ interact with media, as I do in this introductory chapter, because inequalities and divides are fundamental to the role that media play in different everyday lives. Dimensions such as gender, class, age or ethnicity, and the uneven distribution of resources between the Global North or Global South, form intersectional patterns that affect digital media use in everyday contexts. In particular, the debate on datafication strongly accentuates these perspectives (Boyd & Crawford, 2012; Couldry & Mejias, 2019; Milan & Treré, 2019). Several studies of digital media use in non-Western contexts demonstrate the need to be careful about generalizing, and instead develop contextualized understandings of empirical cases and key concepts (e.g. Boczkowski, 2021; Costa, 2018).

However, everyday media use is also a topic where it is possible to read a study from one historical period, cultural context, or global power position, and recognize resonant themes as well as significant differences to one’s own experiences. To situate media use in everyday life is useful to this purpose, because it makes visible rather than obscures some of the sociocultural conditions and normative expectations surrounding media use. This book draws on cross-national studies of everyday media use (e.g. Boczkowski et al., 2021; Carolus et al., 2019; Treré, 2021) as well as single-country studies from geographical and cultural contexts that are different to those analyzed here, but is influenced by my positionality as a media researcher in a small Northern European country.

Empirically, the book is based on extensive qualitative research on digital media use in Norway. Norway is a wealthy welfare state in the Global North, with an active media policy, high ICT penetration, high levels of news use and an advanced digitalized society (Newman et al., 2021; Syvertsen et al., 2014,). Norway is also a very small country with a dispersed population, with many cultural similarities and some differences to its Scandinavian neighbours and the rest of Northern Europe. The Norwegian case is obviously not representative of everyday lives elsewhere or everywhere, as no single country study could possibly be. However, Norway is a suitable case for qualitatively exploring how technological transformations affect media users across everyday contexts, because of the wide and deep proliferation of media technologies in Norwegian society. In the book, the Norwegian cultural and social context is part of the empirical materials as well as my interpretation of them, and I comment and reflect upon some aspects of the Norwegian case and context in the empirical chapters. The main categories that form the three empirical chapters – the ordinary day, across the life course, major disruption – are intended to be relevant and applicable more broadly, even though they can be filled with extensive variation.

An empirical background for the book is a broadly oriented cross-media interview and diary study, with 50 informants mirroring the Norwegian population (Moe et al., 2019a; Moe & Ytre-Arne, 2021), while new empirical materials include smaller case studies focusing on media use amongst new mothers, and media use during the COVID-19 pandemic. These originate from several research projects conducted over the past years, as explained in further detail in the methods appendix. All studies are relatively diverse in terms of the socioeconomic background of informants, in a Norwegian context, and with the exception of the sample on new mothers, there is variation in gender and age groups. The larger sample in particular includes informants with various forms of immigrant or minority backgrounds. 1

Conclusion: Everyday Life After the Smartphone

After more than a decade with the smartphone, what is different about everyday life?

In this book I argue that everyday life is – as before – an experienced lifeworld, a sphere of temporal, spatial, social and existential dimensions, in which we conduct routinized navigation across social domains. Digital, social, and mobile media transform how this navigation takes place – and blurs boundaries set by these temporal, spatial and social structures. We have a lot more choice than before in terms of when, where and how to use media, but this also raises dilemmas and intensifies negotiations of social norms. These tensions are encountered and enacted in workplaces, schools and public areas as much as through quarrels about the remote control in the living room, increasing the mobility and reducing the domesticity of media use in everyday life.

The smartphone is emblematic of this development, due to three important characteristics: It is adaptable, aggregating and always nearby. Adaptability refers to how smartphone use can be adapted to different personal preferences, tasks and settings, making it a go-to platform for a growing number of purposes across digital platforms and services. Aggregating refers to how smartphones connect and integrate these purposes and forms of communication in one single device that forms the centre of a personalized and networked ecosystem of digital communication technologies. Always near , or proximity, refers to how we come to rely on the smartphone as an extension of ourselves, kept near to the body also at night and through different social settings, picked up too frequently to remember. So, we increasingly conduct our routinized navigation across social domains through the smartphone, the centrepiece of our digital everyday life.

In Chapter 2, I substantiate the arguments above about media use after the proliferation of smartphones, focusing on the timeframe of one ordinary day for media users. Based on day-in-the-life interviews, I analyze experiences of waking up with the smartphone, navigating across social domains through digital media use, and negotiating norms and contexts for when and how to use different media. I draw on the arguments introduced here about the adaptable, aggregating and always-near status of the smartphone, but also situate smartphone use in light of broader media repertoires and modes of public connection, by following media users with different everyday lives.

In Chapter 3, I progress from ordinary days to instead discuss periods in which everyday life is changing. I discuss destabilization and reorientation in media use as part of transitions in the life course. Here, I argue that life events are turning points in which we also reconfigure our media repertoires and modes of public connection, and that the adaptable, aggregating and always-near smartphone is particularly easy to turn to in processes. The empirical analysis focuses on the experience of parenthood, but provides two broader arguments: one on destabilization and reorientation of media use, and one on how norms for digital media are negotiated in contexts of changing roles and responsibilities.

In Chapter 4, I push the arguments on destabilization further by discussing the COVID-19 pandemic as an example of global crisis that disrupted everyday life, and affected the ways we use the media for navigating in precarious situations. The pandemic called for re-configuration of everyday media use, but of a different nature and on a different scale as opposed to the life course perspective discussed in Chapter 3. I analyze how the pandemic destabilized media repertoires into becoming more digital, less mobile and still social, and discuss new terminology for pandemic media experiences including doomscrolling and Zoom fatigue.

The last chapter, Chapter 5, concludes by summarizing the main arguments and contributions of the book, and particularly underlines the political dimensions of digital media use in everyday settings.

All informant names in the book are pseudonyms.

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Science News

Social media harms teens’ mental health, mounting evidence shows. what now.

Understanding what is going on in teens’ minds is necessary for targeted policy suggestions

A teen scrolls through social media alone on her phone.

Most teens use social media, often for hours on end. Some social scientists are confident that such use is harming their mental health. Now they want to pinpoint what explains the link.

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Increasing rigor

Concerns over the effects of social media use in children have been circulating for years, resulting in a massive body of scientific literature. But those mostly correlational studies could not show if teen social media use was harming mental health or if teens with mental health problems were using more social media.

Moreover, the findings from such studies were often inconclusive, or the effects on mental health so small as to be inconsequential. In one study that received considerable media attention, psychologists Amy Orben and Andrew Przybylski combined data from three surveys to see if they could find a link between technology use, including social media, and reduced well-being. The duo gauged the well-being of over 355,000 teenagers by focusing on questions around depression, suicidal thinking and self-esteem.

Digital technology use was associated with a slight decrease in adolescent well-being , Orben, now of the University of Cambridge, and Przybylski, of the University of Oxford, reported in 2019 in Nature Human Behaviour . But the duo downplayed that finding, noting that researchers have observed similar drops in adolescent well-being associated with drinking milk, going to the movies or eating potatoes.

Holes have begun to appear in that narrative thanks to newer, more rigorous studies.

In one longitudinal study, researchers — including Orben and Przybylski — used survey data on social media use and well-being from over 17,400 teens and young adults to look at how individuals’ responses to a question gauging life satisfaction changed between 2011 and 2018. And they dug into how the responses varied by gender, age and time spent on social media.

Social media use was associated with a drop in well-being among teens during certain developmental periods, chiefly puberty and young adulthood, the team reported in 2022 in Nature Communications . That translated to lower well-being scores around ages 11 to 13 for girls and ages 14 to 15 for boys. Both groups also reported a drop in well-being around age 19. Moreover, among the older teens, the team found evidence for the Goldilocks Hypothesis: the idea that both too much and too little time spent on social media can harm mental health.

“There’s hardly any effect if you look over everybody. But if you look at specific age groups, at particularly what [Orben] calls ‘windows of sensitivity’ … you see these clear effects,” says L.J. Shrum, a consumer psychologist at HEC Paris who was not involved with this research. His review of studies related to teen social media use and mental health is forthcoming in the Journal of the Association for Consumer Research.

Cause and effect

That longitudinal study hints at causation, researchers say. But one of the clearest ways to pin down cause and effect is through natural or quasi-experiments. For these in-the-wild experiments, researchers must identify situations where the rollout of a societal “treatment” is staggered across space and time. They can then compare outcomes among members of the group who received the treatment to those still in the queue — the control group.

That was the approach Makarin and his team used in their study of Facebook. The researchers homed in on the staggered rollout of Facebook across 775 college campuses from 2004 to 2006. They combined that rollout data with student responses to the National College Health Assessment, a widely used survey of college students’ mental and physical health.

The team then sought to understand if those survey questions captured diagnosable mental health problems. Specifically, they had roughly 500 undergraduate students respond to questions both in the National College Health Assessment and in validated screening tools for depression and anxiety. They found that mental health scores on the assessment predicted scores on the screenings. That suggested that a drop in well-being on the college survey was a good proxy for a corresponding increase in diagnosable mental health disorders.

Compared with campuses that had not yet gained access to Facebook, college campuses with Facebook experienced a 2 percentage point increase in the number of students who met the diagnostic criteria for anxiety or depression, the team found.

When it comes to showing a causal link between social media use in teens and worse mental health, “that study really is the crown jewel right now,” says Cunningham, who was not involved in that research.

A need for nuance

The social media landscape today is vastly different than the landscape of 20 years ago. Facebook is now optimized for maximum addiction, Shrum says, and other newer platforms, such as Snapchat, Instagram and TikTok, have since copied and built on those features. Paired with the ubiquity of social media in general, the negative effects on mental health may well be larger now.

Moreover, social media research tends to focus on young adults — an easier cohort to study than minors. That needs to change, Cunningham says. “Most of us are worried about our high school kids and younger.”

And so, researchers must pivot accordingly. Crucially, simple comparisons of social media users and nonusers no longer make sense. As Orben and Przybylski’s 2022 work suggested, a teen not on social media might well feel worse than one who briefly logs on.

Researchers must also dig into why, and under what circumstances, social media use can harm mental health, Cunningham says. Explanations for this link abound. For instance, social media is thought to crowd out other activities or increase people’s likelihood of comparing themselves unfavorably with others. But big data studies, with their reliance on existing surveys and statistical analyses, cannot address those deeper questions. “These kinds of papers, there’s nothing you can really ask … to find these plausible mechanisms,” Cunningham says.

One ongoing effort to understand social media use from this more nuanced vantage point is the SMART Schools project out of the University of Birmingham in England. Pedagogical expert Victoria Goodyear and her team are comparing mental and physical health outcomes among children who attend schools that have restricted cell phone use to those attending schools without such a policy. The researchers described the protocol of that study of 30 schools and over 1,000 students in the July BMJ Open.

Goodyear and colleagues are also combining that natural experiment with qualitative research. They met with 36 five-person focus groups each consisting of all students, all parents or all educators at six of those schools. The team hopes to learn how students use their phones during the day, how usage practices make students feel, and what the various parties think of restrictions on cell phone use during the school day.

Talking to teens and those in their orbit is the best way to get at the mechanisms by which social media influences well-being — for better or worse, Goodyear says. Moving beyond big data to this more personal approach, however, takes considerable time and effort. “Social media has increased in pace and momentum very, very quickly,” she says. “And research takes a long time to catch up with that process.”

Until that catch-up occurs, though, researchers cannot dole out much advice. “What guidance could we provide to young people, parents and schools to help maintain the positives of social media use?” Goodyear asks. “There’s not concrete evidence yet.”

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J Gerontol B Psychol Sci Soc Sci

Medium Matters: A Decade of Media Consumption Predicts Positive and Negative Dimensions of Self-Perceptions of Aging

Jordan boeder.

1 School of Social Sciences, Policy and Evaluation, Claremont Graduate University, Claremont, California, USA

Dwight C K Tse

2 Department of Psychology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, CUHK, Shatin, NT, Hong Kong SAR, The People’s Republic of China

Veronica Fruiht

3 Department of Psychology, Dominican University of California, San Rafael, California, USA

Thomas Chan

4 Department of Psychology, Health Equity Research and Education Center, California State University, Northridge, Northridge, California, USA

Associated Data

Media consumption over time is suggested to be a significant contributor to how people develop their self-perceptions of aging (SPA); however, this association has only been investigated with cross-sectional methodologies. The current study used growth curve modeling to examine the influence of 10 years of television, newspaper, radio, and book consumption on positive and negative dimensions of SPA.

Growth curve modeling on 4 waves of data from the German Aging Survey ( N = 2,969), a population-based representative survey of adults aged 40–95, was used to examine the longitudinal associations between media consumption and SPA trajectories.

Across 10 years, more television intake ( B = −0.58, 95% CI [−0.94, −0.21]) was associated with lower perceptions of continuous growth. Inversely, greater book ( B = 0.10, 95% CI [0.06, 0.13]) and radio ( B = 0.52, 95% CI [0.29, 0.74]) consumption was significantly linked to higher perceptions of continuous growth. In parallel, more television ( B = 0.88, 95% CI [0.52, 1.25]) and newspaper consumption ( B = 0.46, 95% CI [0.04, 0.88]) was associated with higher perceptions of physical decline, while greater radio ( B = −0.40, 95% CI [−0.64, −0.16]) and book ( B = −0.05, 95% CI [−0.09, −0.00]) consumption was associated with lower perceptions of physical decline.

This study provides longitudinal evidence for the relationship between media consumption and SPA. However, not all types of media intake are negative as radio and book consumption were associated with better SPA across time. Age-group differences were investigated and are discussed in the Supplementary Materials .

Media consumption in the form of viewing television, reading books and newspapers, and listening to the radio takes up the majority leisure time in the United States and Europe ( Aliaga & Winquist, 2003 ; U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2018 ). Specifically, adults watch an average of 4.5 hr of television a day and viewership increases across the life span ( Grajczyk & Zöllner, 1998 )—becoming the most frequently cited activity for older adults ( Robinson et al., 2004 ). Increases in media consumption with age may pose a risk to the health of older adults that reside in primarily ageist societies as media plays a role in reflecting, shaping, and reinforcing social views and norms regarding the aging process and life during old age ( Harwood et al., 1994 ).

The potential risk of consuming ageist media is highlighted by stereotype embodiment theory (SET) which posits that the general aging stereotypes we hold true become self-stereotypes and eventually affect our thoughts and beliefs regarding our own aging process. Such thoughts and beliefs are known as self-perceptions of aging (SPA; Levy, 2009 ). Internalized positive and negative stereotypes become positive and negative SPA, respectively. Moreover, positive SPA includes perceptions of continuous growth and increased self-knowledge and control, and negative SPA includes perceptions of physical decline and social loss ( Steverink et al., 2001 ). Such perceptions have long-term effects on physiological and psychological functioning ( Levy, 2009 ), with those having more positive SPA living an average of 7.5 years longer than those with poorer SPA ( Levy et al., 2002 ). While there is a paucity of empirical research investigating how SPA develops, SET suggests that cultural immersion via media consumption is the primary factor leading to differences in positive and negative SPA among individuals in the same society ( Levy, 2009 ). This position is based on other tenets of SET which hold that most societies have more negative than positive aging stereotypes ( Boduroglu et al., 2006 ), and in turn, more cultural exposure leads to an increasingly disproportionate internalization of negative stereotypes that become negative SPA.

Cultivation theory provides theoretical support for the connection between media consumption and SPA as media is a socializing agent that shapes individuals’ beliefs and attitudes toward aging ( Gerbner et al., 2002 ). Other social psychologists suggest media reflects a culture’s values and standards, which communicate group status and expectations ( Haboush et al., 2012 )—thus, ageist cultures propagate negative expectations that act as self-fulfilling prophecies. Conversely, overly positive images can create ideals that are not possible to reach, ultimately hurting one’s self-perceptions ( Slevec & Tiggemann, 2011 ). An experimental study found that adults who identify as old performed worse on a memory performance tasks after viewing ageist commercials, supporting the possibility that media can prime individuals with a negative self-schema ( Westerhof et al., 2010 ).

Beyond media’s ability to transmit age-related stereotypes, two studies have explored the direct relationship between television consumption and views on aging, finding more television intake is related to worse attitudes toward older adults ( Donlon et al., 2005 ; Gerbner et al., 1980 ). While such findings provide some evidence for SET’s media hypothesis, prior studies have been cross-sectional, conducted with small samples, limited exclusively to television consumption, and focused on attitudes toward older adults instead of SPA. Thus, longitudinal research is needed to test SET’s assumption that more media consumption is related to more negative and less positive SPA.

As media rapidly changes to reflect cultural attitudes, there is conflicting evidence as to whether media is still ageist ( Loos & Ivan, 2018 ; Ylänne, 2015 ). Although early work utilizing content analyses revealed a high degree of ageism in television programming, longitudinal research has found older adults are increasingly portrayed in a positive light, often being shown as active, healthy, and independent ( Loos & Ivan, 2018 ). However, older adults in the media who do possess positive traits most often resemble the third age of life, creating a mostly unachievable representation of successful aging in late life ( Kessler et al., 2004 ). Moreover, older adults are still vastly underrepresented in proportion to their demographic standing in society ( Ylänne, 2015 ), tend to be in minor or peripherical roles, and possess fewer positive traits compared to younger groups ( Loos & Ivan, 2018 ). With television no longer viewed as being inherently ageist, there is a possibility that more consumption may no longer be associated with worse SPA over time.

Significantly less is known about the effects of print and audio media consumption on SPA development. Although not as widely consumed as television, listening to the radio and reading the newspaper and books take up roughly an hour of older adults’ daily activity ( Aliaga & Winquist, 2003 ; U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2018 ). Similar to television programming, print media is becoming less overtly ageist; however, older adults are still vastly underrepresented ( Loos & Ivan, 2018 ; Ylänne, 2015 ). Moreover, like television, ageism is perpetuated by newspapers and radio through advertisements that sell products to overcome “negative” conditions of old age ( Raman et al., 2008 ). Although research on the representation of older adults in books is scarce, studies have shown the rampant ageism in children’s literature as older adults tend to have negative attributes and often subsume the role of the villain ( McGuire, 2003 ).

While it is difficult to determine the extent to which various forms of media are ageist due to constant changes in media content, all forms of media have the potential to support positive SPA. For instance, books can offer factual insights about the world and allow for more complex character development than shorter forms of media. Therefore, it is possible that consuming more books may reduce negative SPA and increase positive SPA. Additionally, gaining perspectives on the world through consuming the news and staying in touch with cultural trends may allow all forms of media consumption to enhance dimensions of positive SPA. More research is needed to investigate whether various forms of media consumption differentially affect dimensions of positive and negative SPA across time.

The Current Study

This study uses longitudinal methods to examine the association between various forms of media (i.e., television viewing, book reading, newspaper reading, and radio listening) and changes in positive and negative SPA in adulthood. Specifically, the study focuses on perceptions of continuous growth and physical decline, as they are most commonly used to represent positive and negative SPA, respectively (for review, see Wurm et al., 2017 ). Due to conflicting evidence for the portrayal of older adults across media platforms, the present study examines the general research question of whether cumulative media consumption is related to changes in perceptions of continuous growth and physical decline across a decade.

Data and Sample

Data for this study come from the German Aging Survey (DEAS), an ongoing nationally representative, cohort-sequential survey of the German population aged 40 and older ( Klaus et al., 2017 ). The first DEAS survey wave took place in 1996, with further waves following in 2002, 2008, 2011, 2014, and 2017. New panels of individuals 40 years and older were added in 2002, 2008, and 2014. The current study includes data from individuals who completed the 2008 survey and at least two additional surveys in 2011, 2014, and 2017 ( N = 2,969). In general, ongoing participants tend to be younger, healthier, more educated, and have higher incomes and larger informal networks than respondents who drop out ( Klaus et al., 2017 ). Participant characteristics are in Table 1 .

Participant Characteristics at Baseline ( N = 2,969)

Variables	Mean/percentage
Age (years)	60.18	10.43
Gender
Female	51.4%
Male	48.6%
Education
Low (incomplete vocational training/high school)	6.0%
Medium (completed vocational training/high school)	49.7%
High (any higher education)	44.3%
Marital status
Single	16.5%
Partnered	83.5%
Net monthly income (Euros)	2,882.74	3,054.16
Number of physical illnesses	2.16	1.67
Depression	6.08	5.76
Television consumption (hours/weekday)	2.46	1.58
Newspaper consumption	5.40	1.28
Radio consumption (hours/weekday)	2.64	2.91
Books consumption (count per year)	10.90	22.14
Perceptions of continuous growth	64.61	16.43
Perceptions of physical decline	58.01	17.95

Notes : SD = standard deviation. These demographics represent each participant’s response during the 2008 wave. Newspaper consumption was rated on a Likert scale ranging from 1 ( daily ) to 6 ( never ). Scores were reverse-coded, so higher ratings reflect more consumption.

Media consumption

While prior work has measured television viewing exclusively as media use ( Donlon et al., 2005 ), the present study better aligns with recent time use surveys by measuring television, radio, newspaper, and book consumption ( U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2018 ). Television consumption was measured with the item, “How many hours in total, on an average weekday, do you spend watching television?” Radio usage was assessed with a single item, “How many hours per day do you have the radio on, either as background (music) while doing other things or actually listening to the content of radio programs?” This question was slightly changed in 2014 to focus on radio listening during a typical weekday. Newspaper consumption was measured through a 6-point Likert question asking respondents “How often do you read the newspaper?” with options ranging from 1 ( daily ) to 6 ( never ). Scores were reverse-coded, so higher scores equate to more newspaper consumption. To assess book reading, participants were asked “How many books have you read in your spare time over the past 12 months?”

Perceptions of continuous growth

Perceptions of continuous growth were assessed with the 4-item Ongoing Development scale, a component of the Aging-related Cognitions scales ( Steverink et al., 2001 ). Participants rated their perceptions on a 4-point Likert scale, ranging from 1 ( definitely false ) to 4 ( definitely true ). A sample item is “Aging means to me that I continue to make plans.” Previous research has found the scale to be reliable ( Steverink et al., 2001 ; α = 0.78). The intraclass correlation (ICC) indicates that 54.11% of variance was between-person.

Perceptions of physical decline

Perceptions of physical decline were measured with the 4-item Aging-related Cognitions scale of Physical Loss ( Steverink et al., 2001 ). Participants were asked to rate their perceptions on aging with a 4-point Likert scale, ranging from 1 ( definitely false ) to 4 ( definitely true ) on items such as, “Aging means to me being less energetic and fit.” The scale has been found to be valid and reliable ( Steverink et al., 2001 ; α = 0.79). The ICC for the measure indicates that 56.92% of variance was between-person.

In addition to media consumption, longitudinal studies have emphasized the association between personal characteristics and SPA. For instance, being older, and having more functional limitations and depression are negatively related to SPA ( Sargent-Cox et al., 2012 ) as deteriorating health influences one’s ability to view aging positively. Furthermore, one’s gender, marital status, and income are all associated with SPA ( Kleinspehn-Ammerlahn et al., 2008 ; Kotter-Grühn et al., 2009 ), and can influence the impact of media intake. To account for these effects, age, sex, education, marital status, socioeconomic status, comorbidities, and depression were used as covariates. Educational attainment was assessed with the International Standard Classification of Education which distinguishes between low (incomplete vocational training), medium (complete vocational training and/or high school degree), and higher education (completion of any higher education). Socioeconomic status was measured by net monthly household income. Lastly, comorbidity was represented by total number of physical illnesses from a list of 11 chronic health conditions (e.g., cardiovascular diseases, arthritis; ranging from 0 to 11). The German version of the Center for Epidemiological Studies-Depression scale was used to assess depressive symptoms ( Hautzinger, 1988 ). Scores were summed and transformed so that they range from 0 to 45.

Data Analysis

To determine the association between various types of media usage and perceptions of continuous growth and physical decline across a decade of adulthood, two growth curve models were created using SPSS version 26. A maximum likelihood estimator was used to account for missingness. As suggested for longitudinal studies to have more interpretable fixed-effect coefficients, the dependent variables were transformed using the percentage of maximum possible (POMP) method, such that the lowest and highest scores are transformed to 0 and 100, respectively ( Moeller, 2015 ). In the conditional models, age, gender, education, and marital status were grand-mean-centered and modeled as time invariant covariates. The media consumption variables, income, depression, and number of physical illnesses were modeled as time-varying predictors. Random effects were modeled for all media consumption variables. All models utilized a variance components covariance matrix. Supplemental analyses were carried out to investigate whether the effect of media on SPA was the same across middle-aged (40–59 years of age) and older adults (60 years of age and older; see Supplementary Appendices A and B )

Unconditional growth curve models suggested time for both perceptions of aging should be represented linearly. Specifically, perceptions of continuous growth were found to start above the midpoint of the transformed scale ( B = 64.61, 95% CI [64.03, 65.19]) and decline at each wave ( B = −0.42, 95% CI [−0.66, −0.17]). In contrast, perceptions of physical decline started above the scale’s midpoint ( B = 57.84, 95% CI [57.21, 58.47]), but increased linearly at each wave ( B = 0.20, 95% CI [−0.02, 0.42]). Although the linear decline in perceptions of physical decline was small, the significant random effect of the slope suggests that there are notable between-person differences in intraindividual change over time (see Supplementary Appendix C ).

The results from each conditional analysis focus on the effect of the media consumption variables, while the estimates for all variables can be found in Table 2 . More television consumption was associated with decreases in perceptions of continuous growth ( B = −0.58, 95% CI [−0.94, −0.21]), while more radio ( B = 0.52, 95% CI [0.29, 0.74]) and book ( B = 0.10, 95% CI [0.06, 0.13]) consumption was related to increases in these perceptions at each wave. In contrast, newspaper consumption ( B = −0.13, 95% CI [−0.54, 0.29]) was not significantly related to perceptions of continuous growth across waves. These findings held for middle-aged adults. For older adults, the influence of newspaper consumption on perceptions of continuous growth was not significant; however, the effect was in the positive direction. Additionally, the influence of book consumption did not reach statistical significance for older adults (see Supplementary Appendices D – F ).

Fixed and Random Effects of Predictors on Self-Perceptions of Aging ( N = 2,969)

	Perceptions of continuous growth	Perceptions of physical decline
Variable	[95% CI]	[95% CI]
Fixed effects
Intercept	65.98*** [63.12, 68.85]	49.74*** [46.84, 52.64]
Time	0.09 [−0.39, 0.56]	−0.42 [−0.90, 0.05]
Television consumption	−0.58** [−0.94, −0.21]	0.88*** [0.52, 1.25]
Newspaper consumption	−0.13 [−0.54, 0.29]	0.46* [0.04, 0.88]
Radio consumption	0.52*** [0.29, 0.74]	−0.40*** [−0.64, −0.16]
Books consumption	0.10*** [0.06, 0.13]	−0.05* [−0.09, −0.00]
Age	0.02 [−0.07, 0.11]	−0.12* [−0.33, −0.03]
Gender	0.12 [−1.75, 2.00]	−2.79** [−4.76, −0.82]
Education	1.22 [−0.37, 2.81]	0.74 [−0.93, 2.42]
Marital status	0.07 [−2.50, 2.63]	1.56 [−1.13, 4.24]
Net monthly income	0.58** [0.24, 0.93]	−0.50** [−0.85, −0.14]
Number of physical illnesses	−1.47*** [−1.83, −1.11]	2.80*** [2.43, 3.16]
Depression	−0.07 [−0.17, 0.03]	0.06 [−0.04, 0.16]
Linear effects on time
Age	−0.13*** [−0.18, 0.08]	0.08*** [0.03, 0.12]
Gender	0.41 [−0.53, 1.36]	0.64 [−0.30, 1.59]
Education	0.22 [−0.58, 1.02]	0.04 [−0.76, 0.83]
Marital status	0.69 [−0.62, 2.00]	−1.65* [−2.96, −0.35]
Random effects
Time	9.40*** [6.50, 13.58]	3.19* [1.26, 8.05]
Television consumption	2.53*** [1.56, 4.09]	1.72** [0.88, 3.34]
Newspaper consumption	2.86*** [2.35, 3.48]	2.96*** [2.43, 3.60]
Radio consumption	0.43 [0.12, 1.49]	1.15*** [0.63, 2.09]
Book consumption	0.01 [0.00, 0.02]	0.01 [1.14, 1.78]

Notes : CI = confidence interval. Net monthly income was divided by 1,000 to create more equal variances among predictors.

*p < .05. ** p < .01. *** p < .001.

When modeling perceptions of physical decline as the dependent variable, increases in television ( B = 0.88, 95% CI [0.52, 1.25]) and newspaper ( B = 0.46, 95% CI [0.04, 0.88]) consumption were associated with more negative perceptions at each time point. In contrast, radio ( B = −0.40, 95% CI [−0.64, −0.16]) and book consumption were inversely related to perceptions of physical decline ( B = −0.05, 95% CI [−0.09, −0.00]; see Table 2 ). The direction of effects was the same across age groups; however, the effects of book and newspaper consumption on perceptions of physical decline did not reach statistical significance for middle-aged and older adults, respectively (see Supplementary Appendices D – F ).

The current study investigated SET’s assumption that more media consumption is responsible for worse SPA among individuals in the same culture ( Levy, 2009 ). In line with previous work investigating attitudes toward older adults, television consumption was related to worse SPA (i.e., lower perceptions of continuous growth and higher perceptions of physical decline) across a 10-year period ( Donlon et al., 2005 ; Gerbner et al., 1980 ). However, media consumption is not inherently harmful, as radio and book consumption were associated with more positive SPA over time. Additionally, results suggest that media’s longitudinal association with SPA is more complex than previously assumed since more newspaper consumption was related to increases in perceptions of physical decline, but unrelated to perceptions of continuous growth. Although it appears that cultural immersion is associated with differences in SPA across time, media consumption is not inherently harmful, just as it is not inherently ageist—especially as societies progress ( Loos & Ivan, 2018 ).

With worse SPA being related to an increased risk of mortality ( Levy et al., 2002 ), the negative impact of television consumption on SPA poses a health risk to the German people, as well as other nations where television is the most pervasive form of media intake ( Aliaga & Winquist, 2003 ). As television intake increases with age ( Robinson et al., 2004 ), there may be a cumulative negative effect on health and mortality risks. Our results provide some evidence that the content chosen by individuals promotes ageist stereotypes. However, research finds that television is becoming less ageist in Europe and United States ( Loos & Ivan, 2018 ; Ylänne, 2015 ), and that older adults prefer more informative television like watching news channels ( Robinson et al., 2004 ). Therefore, the harmful relationship between television consumption and SPA may be driven by ageist advertisements which are found across nations (e.g., China, Europe, India, and United States; Zhang et al., 2006 ).

Advertisements prompting comparisons to unrealistic aging expectations or priming negative age schemas ( Westerhof et al., 2010 ) may also engender the observed negative influence of newspaper consumption on perceptions of physical decline. While the content of newspapers has not been found to be ageist beyond underrepresentation, the same cannot be said for the advertisements in this medium ( Carrigan & Szmigin, 2000 ). The finding that newspapers were only related to perceptions of physical decline and not ongoing development may be explained by the extent to which newspaper advertisements promote stereotypes related to physical deterioration, the most prevalent domain of negative stereotypes associated with aging ( Hummert, 2011 ). Beyond solutions offered to allay ageist media content ( Loos & Ivan, 2018 ), policy makers in Germany and nations that have similar forms of ageist media content (e.g., China, India, and the United States) should limit ageist advertisements as a means of promoting public health.

Notably, not all forms of media consumption were related to worse SPA. Listening to the radio and reading books were beneficial forms of cultural immersion that allowed for more positive SPA over time. It is possible that books provide the pleasure of television and the information of newspapers without the advertising. Interestingly, while the radio does have advertisements, one study found that older adults are far less likely to recall age-related advertising on the radio (9%) compared to television (53%; Zhang et al., 2006 ). Again, while the radio is used for similar reasons as television and newspapers, the lack of influence by advertisements may allow the beneficial ties to culture provided by media consumption take hold without the promotion of ageist messages.

Limitations and Future Directions

Although the German Aging Survey allowed for a thorough investigation of the relationship between the quantity of media consumption and changes in SPA across 10 years, it was not possible to investigate the content of the media participants consumed. Future research should focus specifically on the interaction between media type and content in relation to SPA development. Relatedly, this study observed slight age-group differences in the effects of media on SPA. The direction of the effects was the same across age groups with the exception of the nonsignificant positive association between newspaper consumption and perceptions of continuous growth for older adults. Replication is needed to determine whether differences in significance levels were due to reductions in sample size or actual group differences. Overall, more research is needed to begin to disentangle these findings as not much is currently known about the factors that differentially affect younger and older adults’ internalization of age-related content, especially as it relates to various forms of media.

Even though this study revealed longitudinal associations between media intake and SPA, causality cannot be inferred from the findings due to the lack of experimental control needed to eliminate alternative causal hypotheses. Therefore, more longitudinal studies are needed to disentangle the direction of effects, and test whether worsening SPA may prompt more negative forms of media consumption. Moreover, with media content and interfaces constantly evolving (i.e., streaming services), more research is needed to see if the current findings hold for more recent media programming. With some paid streaming services not having advertisements it may be possible to test whether the harmful effects of television consumption on SPA are driven by advertisements. The current study is the first to explore the long-term link between media consumption and dimensions of positive and negative SPA. Based on the findings, it is clear that actions need to be taken to reduce ageism on television to enhance positive aging at the population level.

Supplementary Material

Gbaa229_suppl_supplemental_material, acknowledgments.

All data come from the German Aging Study. Due to contractual obligations, the data cannot be released by the authors. However, all syntax for analyses can be made available and will be sent upon request. The data from this study were not preregistered due to the data set being owned by the German Government. This study was not preregistered. However, all analytic materials will be sent upon request.

T. Chan is supported by NIH NIGMS BUILD (UL1GM118976 and RL5GM118975). The German Ageing Survey was funded by the German Federal Ministry for Family, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth.

Conflict of Interest

None declared.

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Media Habits Are Changing Rapidly For Young Adults ... - Forbes
Media habits have undergone a sweeping change driven by streaming content and other digital media platforms, especially among younger age groups.
Measuring News Consumption in a Digital Era | Pew Research Center
This report is the culmination of a yearlong study into Americans’ news consumption habits in an era of rapidly evolving media technology and a look at how researchers can measure those news habits.
Teens’ Social Media Habits and Experiences | Pew Research Center
Roughly eight-in-ten teens ages 13 to 17 (81%) say social media makes them feel more connected to what’s going on in their friends’ lives, while around two-thirds say these platforms make them feel as if they have people who will support them through tough times.
The changing news habits and attitudes of younger audiences
As we discuss throughout this report, young people – particularly 18–24s – have different attitudes toward how the news is practised: they are more likely than older groups to believe media organisations should take a stand on issues like climate change and to think journalists should be free to express their personal views on social media.
Social Media Use in 2021 | Pew Research Center
To better understand Americans’ use of social media, online platforms and messaging apps, Pew Research Center surveyed 1,502 U.S. adults from Jan. 25 to Feb. 8, 2021, by cellphone and landline phone.
Habits and Generational Media Use - Taylor & Francis Online
This article analyses how different generations’ everyday media habits—focusing on news media and social media—interrelate with media use during societal crises.
Introduction: Media Use and Everyday Life in Digital Societies
In this book, I draw on media repertoire approaches to analyze everyday media use from the perspective of individual users, and on the public connection concept to discuss how people connect to society through everyday media use.
Building and breaking social media habits - ScienceDirect
Social media habits represent one of the most common – and controversial – forms of habitual behavior in contemporary society. In this brief article, we summarize the state of research on social media habits, along with their position within the technology habit literature.
Social media harms teens’ mental health, mounting evidence ...
Recent studies suggest a causal link between teen social media use and reduced well-being. Now, some researchers are looking into possible mechanisms.
Medium Matters: A Decade of Media Consumption Predicts ...
Due to conflicting evidence for the portrayal of older adults across media platforms, the present study examines the general research question of whether cumulative media consumption is related to changes in perceptions of continuous growth and physical decline across a decade.