Where is youth television?

Young people between the ages of 14 and 25 are the population segment that currently consumes the least television. Because? Nereida López-Vidales, director of OCENDI, analyzes this phenomenon in this Tribune.

Young people between the ages of 14 and 25 are the population segment that currently consumes the least television because they prefer to access content virtually and through mobile devices.

In Spain, its index has decreased by more than 10 points, going from 20% in 1995 to an estimated 6% according to studies by Nielsen, Kantar Media and the General Media Study of 2009 and 2010. Although the year 2011 is not yet closed, it is estimated that this index will remain around 6-6.5% in the entire segment (14-25 years). And if consumption habits change depending on age, it is a fact that this sector of the population is characterized by accessing information through new devices and distribution platforms, as well as by reading fewer newspapers and watching less television.

In this sense, the Third Edition of the Deloitte Report confirms that, while people aged between 43 and 61 and between 62 and 75 spend 19 to 21 and a half hours per week, respectively, watching television, consumption is reduced to 15 hours per week among adults aged 26 to 42, while among young people aged between 14 and 25 these are reduced to less than 10 hours. and a half. On the other hand, according to data extracted from the First Meeting on online television organized by Televeo, 70% of young Spaniards have downloaded audiovisual content on some occasion, while 40% have consumed television or streaming videos. They are, above all, consumers of social networks. According to the results of the 2nd Wave of the Social Network Observatory (February 2010), they respond to the profile called Trend Follower: young people between 16 and 25 years old, very active on the Internet, Tuenti, YouTube Fotolog, who use these networks as a form of leisure and entertainment, to have information about events, parties or hangouts, but whose use and consumption is also influenced by the fashion actor.

Thus, the Internet stands as the favorite medium, especially among the youngest (14-17 years old), where 40% say they use the Internet for entertainment, compared to 26% of those between 18 and 25 years old. It is the medium usually chosen by young people to enjoy their free time, whether with the aim of consuming programmed content, downloading or exchanging music files, videos, photographs, etc.

The most common practice of entertainment on the Internet, such as interacting through chat or emails, social networks or Messenger, is not reflected in the survey prepared for this study because many individuals disassociate this activity from production outside of them and directly related to the media. The majority of young people who have openly expressed their opinion consider the uses described as relationship habits with their closest circle, but do not consider them “consumption” of media.

What's more, for the youngest age group, television is not among their favorite media for their leisure time, while in the second age subsegment there are 15% of young people who continue to prefer television for entertainment, becoming for them their third option, behind the Internet and cinema.

For both groups, cinema is the second option among the media to enjoy their leisure time. However, in this case too, the difference between young people aged 14 to 17 who indicate cinema as one of their favorite options (28%) and those aged 18 to 25 (19%) is notable. On the contrary, the differences between the two groups are smaller in the rest of the media consumed, including radio, magazines and newspapers.

In this way, it can be stated that the new generations of viewers “have taken control” (López, 2008), in the sense that they are users and clients of the media; They demand content and pay for it, either through the telephone rate or by product, and they opt for express or à la carte content that does not prevent them from carrying out other tasks in parallel and that allows them not only to choose, but also to intervene.

Young people don't like television, why?

The research project "Youth preference in new television formats. Consumption trends in young people between 14 and 25 years old", carried out by the Observatory of digital leisure and entertainment, OCENDI, tries to answer this question. In the aforementioned study, more than 1,470 young people between 18 and 25 years old and 550 between 14 and 17 years old throughout Spain were personally interviewed. In addition, the survey has been enabled on the observatory's website to collect more results. Finally, a total of 2,266 young people have contributed their opinions.

Competition on television, exacerbated by the recent multiplication of free-to-air channels, has tried to implement formulas that would energize and renew the programmatic grid. In this sense, recent years have seen a combination of premieres of variety shows, series and sports content that have left the viewer exhausted. Most of the proposals were replaced within just a few weeks of broadcast, giving rise to other “lights at half throttle” that did not have any better luck. They have also been years characterized by re-releases and improved formulas of already known proposals that flooded the schedules, even cloning the time slots to avoid the transfer of audiences from one channel to another. Even so, and despite the efforts of programmers to innovate on the grids, current television content does not quite convince the youngest, who say that this is not “their” television.

Among adolescents (14-17 years old), around half of those surveyed consider that on current television there is an abuse of heartfelt programs (13.59%) and an excess of pink journalism (12.41%), while they believe that the content broadcast is strongly conditioned by advertising (10.05%) and that there are few cinematographic spaces (7.03%). Consequently, 7.91% call the medium a trash TV, a label that in the case of the second group of young people investigated, those aged between 18 and 25, increases considerably. In fact, 20.56% of the young people surveyed between those ages speak of current television as trash television. For the latter, there is also an abuse of heart programs in the middle (16.04%), with low quality spaces (15.58%) and grills plagued with little variety (13.63%).

In short, they consider that it is low-quality television, which offers interested information, does not cater to the tastes of all sectors, with an excess of reality shows and programs with characters that have little or nothing to do with the profession. They blame this professional “intrusion” for trivializing the television scene and harming the transmission of quality cultural or serious content. In his opinion, current television serves entertainment “for entertainment's sake,” forgetting the social, informative and educational function that the medium has traditionally assigned.

With these data, the public between 14 and 17 years old opts for television with fewer heartfelt programs (12.56%), less advertising (11.35%), with more programs for young people (8.93%), more cinema (8.83%) and less trash TV (8.13). Those between 18 and 25 years old, for their part, also opt for a lower presence of heartfelt programs (14.7%), while at the same time they propose greater dissemination of culture (9.79%) and the broadcast of programs with higher quality (9.55%).

In fact, as the graph shows, the youngest would like television programs to be about leisure topics (16.99%), current affairs (16.32%) and sports (16.07%), followed by those about sex (14.9), relationships (13.64), travel (8.28%), video games (7.95%) and information (5.86%). In the next age group (18-25 years), preferences also revolve around current affairs (21.7%) and leisure (15.86%), followed by travel programs (15.86%), information (14.38%), sports (9.66%), relationships (9.64%), sex (7.96%) and video games (4.88%).

Nereida López-Vidales

Professor of New Technologies at the University of Valladolid and Director of the Leisure and Digital Entertainment Observatory, Killed