Media use among 8-18 year olds increases while time spent reading books remains steady

A new study conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that daily media use among children and teens has increased dramatically since 2004. In 2009, 8-18 year olds consumed an average of seven hours and 38 minutes of entertainment media a day. This is up from six hours and 21 minutes a day in 2004. The increase in media usage is driven largely by access to cell phones and iPods/MP3 players. Over the past five years, cell phone ownership among 8-18 year olds increased from 39% to 66% and iPod/MP3 player ownership increased from 18% to 76%. Activities such as social networking and high levels of media multitasking also contributed to the increase.

According to the report, the amount of time spent with mediums such as music/audio, TV content, computers, and video games increased while movies and print decreased. Print media decreased from an average of 43 minutes per day in 2004 to 38 minutes in 2009. The decrease is attributed to time spent with magazines which dropped from 14 minutes in 2004 to 9 minutes in 2009 and newspapers which dropped from 6 minutes to 3 minutes. Interestingly, the time that children and teens spend reading books has remained steady at 25 minutes per day. In addition, 8-18 year olds now spend an average of two minutes per day reading magazines and newspapers online.

The Future of Media Consumption

An interesting article from The Wall Street Journal, discusses a variety of new innovations that will soon change the way we watch movies. In the future we will be able to send movies wirelessly from iPhones to TV’s, talk with others via the TV screen while watching the same movie, and experience advanced digital projection and 3-D movies at the theater. Another feature that will become more advanced is movie distribution via kiosks. Companies such as Blockbuster and MOD Systems are in the process of scheduling and conducting pilots while our own NACS Media Solutions/Polar Frog Digital pilots are set to begin in the first two weeks of January. The idea behind all of the kiosk solutions is to offer convenience and choice to the customer by allowing them to choose a movie from a selection of thousands of titles and make it available to them in minutes. While Blockbuster is currently testing out kiosks that burn movies onto Archos portable movie players and then hook up to TV’s, MOD Systems is working on kiosks that burn movies to SD cards that can be used with select TV’s and DVD players. As noted in a previous posting and press release the NACS Media Solutions/Polar Frog Digital pilot will place kiosks in college bookstores and allow students to create “Burn to Own” DVDs. During the second phase of implementation, “Burn to Rent” DVDs and a web-based download delivery option will also be available.

Teens in Tech

There is a new website initiative to watch -- http://www.teensintech.com/. The site is the concept of a 15 year old, and is already starting to get a fair amount of press and attention. Here is the site description:

Teens in Tech (www.teensintech.com), the new community for teenagers who produce new media content, including podcasts, blogs, videocasts and more, has launched into private alpha. “Today’s teens are the most media-savvy and self-expressive in history. Yet until now, no company has focused on their needs. Teens in Tech gives teens tools that are designed by teens for teens."

The next generation of content creators -- soon to arrive on our campuses, are now beginning to create their own tools for content, media, social expression and communication. This will probably be a site to watch to get a catch on the "new media solutions" teens create to communicate with each other.

RealNetworks to Introduce a DVD Copier

Following up on the piracy story from a couple days ago, on Monday The New York Times reported that RealNetworks is introducing a DVD copier application-- "a $30 software program for Windows computers that allows users to easily make a digital copy of an entire DVD — down to the extras and artwork from the box." The article goes on to discuss how the movie studios have fought such applications in the past, and how those protections and arguments appear to be weakening in the face of new tools that offer some piracy protection.

I think the key quote from the piece is the closing line: “Once you give consumers a legitimate path, you can do all kinds of other interesting things with them.” That is a lesson to remember for content producers and content sellers -- like college stores. College stores have an opportunity to work with content producers to find mechanisms that provide legitimate paths to digital content, and that must be done in an affordable way. We must define, design, and develop new business models and make the investments to establish industry capabilty and credibility in this domain. Otherwise, others will do it for us, leaving stores increasingly marginalized in the move to new mediums for content delivery. The new NACS subsidiary will be helping stores accomplish this goal. The first pilots will be starting in the next 6-8 weeks and more public announcements are soon to follow.

Video the New Textbook?

I read an interesting piece this morning about NBC's new iCue. The iCue site name comes from Immerse, Connect, Understand, and Excel and is targeted towards high school students. It will include things like study guides for AP courses in history, politics, English and other topics. More interestingly, it will allow students to "stockpile" video clips, and then annotate and share the content in a very "Web 2.0" kind of way.

The NBC executive behind the initiative said the initiative is based on the premise that "video will replace the textbook." An interesting concept. It is worth noting that in another piece
from last summer Cisco identified two trends in K-12 they saw as significant for education. One of those was the dramatic increase in the use of digitally downloadable video for use in the classroom.

The concept of video as the textbook may be taking things a bit far, but perhaps not too far. The future will likely be more interactive media -- or true multi-media. Video will certainly be a significant part of that. It also brings another new set of players into the course materials content market. This perspective is echoed again in the first article where the author reports: NBC tried to find a way to work on the project with textbook publishers but couldn't find common ground, he says, adding that textbook publishers have held a virtual monopoly over educational materials. Change is certainly in the air.

We are seeing many new content producers and content aggregators entering the field of educational materials -- and digital delivery is lowering the barriers to entry. An explosion of content providers will not necessarily make things easier or better for faculty and students. What we need is a way to aggregate the aggregators in an effective way, that allows for rating and evaluating the quality of the content being contributed, and which enables easier content discovery. That is the role college stores and campus libraries have played in the past. How might we work together to fill that role again in the future?