By 2015, a Common Sense study that included similar methods to and one of the authors from the Kaiser report found that teens averaged about nine hours a day of media use.24 A decade after its first study of young people’s media use Kaiser summed up its key takeaway this way: “The story of media in young people’s lives today is primarily a story of technology facilitating increased consumption.”25 Several studies also report significant racial and ethnic differences in young people’s media consumption. The Common Sense study finds that African American youth spend about eleven hours a day with media compared to nine and eight hours, respectively, among their Latino and white counterparts.26
A 2010 Kaiser study found that Latino and black youth were significantly more active on their mobile devices than white youth, suggesting that mobile adoption in the digital edge has been in the making for some time.27 For instance, Latino and black youth spent more time texting and talking with their mobile phones than their white counterparts.28 The racial gap in mobile media consumption was even wider. Compared with white children and teens, black and Latino youth were heavy consumers of media content via mobile devices. Both black and Latino youth spend more time than white youth using mobile to consume music, games, and video.29 Mobile is the ultimate media consumption platform and easily provides teens with what Nielsen Media Research calls “entertainment Nirvana.”30 The consumption of entertainment media was a major impetus in the coveting of mobile devices among many of the students in our study.
The twin brothers Miguel and Marcus wanted mobile devices to access Facebook and play games. Selena wanted mobile so that she could listen to her favorite bands and post pictures on social media. Sergio believed that a mobile device would keep him connected to his favorite bands. The role of mobile as a platform for media consumption was clearly evident from the initial focus group that we conducted with students. Many of them echoed a similar sentiment: “I use my mobile for everything.” Translation: “I consume much of my media entertainment via my mobile device.” For many young people, their participation in pop culture is increasingly facilitated by their adoption and use of mobile content including, among other things, music, video games, apps, video, memes, social media, and photos. But the significance of mobile in the lives of teens extends well beyond the media that they consume.
Mobile, for example, is a source for peer community and social identity. In their adoption of mobile, teens align themselves with certain peer groups, tastes, cultures, and what sociologist Pierre Bourdieu refers to as “distinctions” in their acquisition of peer-inflected forms of cultural capital.31 Among young people, mobile technologies are clear markers of social status.32 Students at Freeway noticed when their peers acquired a new mobile device. When Diego received an iPhone as a gift from his mother, his standing in his peer group immediately rose. Students without handheld devices, like Miguel and Marcus, experienced varying degrees of frustration and social isolation from their peers. Whereas technology is often decried for making young people less social, a new reality has emerged: not owning a connected device may actually lead to greater social isolation from peers.
Several factors—social, structural, and financial—provide greater perspective on the rising rates of mobile media consumption among black and Latino teens. Over the course of our fieldwork we noticed that many of the students at Freeway lacked access to enrichment opportunities outside of what the school provided. As we discuss in chapter six, many families at Freeway did not have the resources—money or the time—to invest in costly or time-consuming after-school learning and enrichment activities for their children. This partially explains the higher amounts of leisure time among youth in lower-income households and lower amounts among youth in higher-income households.33 Consequently, youth from lower-income households find themselves with substantial amounts of free or unstructured time on their hands. Equipped with a rising number of screens, including handhelds, some children and teens may be filling some of that free time consuming mobile games, videos, music, and social media.
A conversation between one of our researchers and Gabriella, a young sophomore student in our sample, highlights how unstructured time, boredom, and access to a mobile screen can lead to increased media consumption. Discussing her use of social media, Gabriella says, “I would say that I am addicted to Twitter during the summer because I have nothing to do so I keep checking it every five minutes. Even when I log out and go to eat or something and then five minutes later I need to go back.” She also explained that she is trying to “break myself from Twitter,” a platform she called entertaining.
“Why do you want to break from Twitter?” a member of our research team asked.
“Because it’s annoying after a while. It stops me from doing other things,” Gabriella responded.
We are not convinced that Gabriella’s constant engagement with Twitter is attributable to a social-psychological disorder—Internet addiction. Rather, the likely unstructured leisure time induces her to use mobile media to occupy time and ease the annoyance of boredom.
The racial, ethnic, and class trends in media consumption noted above are not new. Historically, social and economic factors have influenced differences in youth media consumption. High levels of entertainment media consumption tend to correspond with lower economic status.34 Although mobile devices did not create the media consumption gaps reported above, the rising rates of mobile media ownership in black and Latino households might certainly be accelerating these trends.
The broad diffusion of handheld devices among young children and teens is certainly changing their media consumption behaviors, and the implications—health, educational, social—for youth in disadvantaged households are worth noting. Compared with older forms of screen-based media, such as television, video, console-based games, and computers, mobile devices introduce new dimensions to teen media consumption. First, mobile privatizes young people’s media consumption more than ever before, making it increasingly difficult for parents, teachers, and other adults to monitor. Second, and perhaps more important, is the ability to consume media on the go and across different settings. For a number of youth in our study, the consumption of media takes place early in the morning and late in the evening, in school and out of school—in other words, anytime and anywhere.35
However, the focus on screen time obscures other substantive issues. Rather than ask, how much media do young people consume?, the more relevant question is, what kinds of media are young people consuming? The latter question shifts the focus to quality, not quantity, and considers the different repertoires of media use. In today’s environment, media can be a diverse experience, one marked by production rather than consumption, participation rather than isolation, and skill building rather than time wasting. Even as studies document the rising rates of media consumption and screen time, it is important to acknowledge that not all screen time is equal.
The data and adoption trends discussed above confirm that mobile figures prominently in the lives of many black and Latino youth. Still, we know very little about how mobile media matter in their everyday lives. In the end, the more substantive issues related to mobile are less about devices and more about practices. That is, what are Latino and black youth doing with the mobile devices that they are adopting, and how, if at all, are mobile technologies transforming life, learning, and opportunity in the digital edge? The next three sections offer more texture and context to our mapping and understanding of the mobile lives of the students that we met at Freeway.
Mobile
