Nomads and realists

“The evolution of youth media consumption in Italy and in Europe”: that’s the title of the 7th Report on Communication of CENSIS, the Italian socio-economic research institute, and of UCSI, the Catholic Union of the Italian Press, presented in Rome on 9 June. 5000 youth between the ages of 14 and 29 in Italy, France, Spain, the UK and Germany were interviewed in October 2007. The sum of the data collected shows their attitude to the media, a mixture between “nomadism and disenchantment” that leads them to pass from one media experience to another without attaching much importance to any of them: they are largely indifferent to the media they use. A uniform model. The findings of the Report show that European youth are converging on a uniform model of media use. In all the main countries of Europe young people enter into contact with a large number of media; the internet has experienced a very high rate of penetration; and male and female media consumption tends to uniformity. In all these countries television, cell phones and internet take first place in the regular use of the media, followed by radio, books and dailies, though again at higher levels than is registered for older age groups. These trends are even more marked among the very young. Mobile phones. Everywhere the young make enormous use of cell phones, but only in Italy do 96.5% of youth now use them on a regular basis. In the other countries covered by the survey regular users fluctuate between 89.3% in Germany, 83.9% in Great Britain, 83.7% in Spain, and 73.8% in France. It is interesting to note that in 2006 75% of German youth made regular use of the cell phone, whereas now their percentage has risen to almost 90%, where French youth registered around 80% but have now fallen to 70%. Spanish and British youth registered rates around 90% but have now slightly dipped in their use of cell phones; the Italians alone who had already reached a percentage of over 90% in 2006, are now approaching the 100% mark (already their percentage is 97.2% in the 14-18 age group). Internet and books. If for Italian youth the cell phone is the hinge round which their system of communication rotates, for their English and German counterparts that hinge is represented by the Internet. In Great Britain and Germany regular use of the world wide web has risen respectively to 77.7% and 76.5% against 73.8% in Italy. Spanish and French youth not only use less Internet (respectively 69.5% and 65.7%), but also read less books than their European counterparts: at least three books per year for only 43.3% of Spanish youth and 48.1% of French, in contrast to 60.7% of Germans, 62.1% of Italians and 64.5% of British. The same goes, though in a less accentuated manner, also for their consumption of dailies and use of the radio. Television. Television is one of the essential points of reference round which the young generations construct their experience of life, but public TV is losing its appeal (though not in France where it has risen from 80.5% of regular use in 2006 to 87.1% in 2007), while there is growing appetite for satellite television (50.4% in Great Britain), terrestrial digital TV and all forms of television via cable or via internet (ever greater percentages in the countries of northern Europe in contrast to those of the Mediterranean). The preferences shown for the media in leisure time corroborate these findings. In all cases the first three places in the preferences of young people are filled by internet, television and books, but not always in the same order. In France the first place is taken by TV (with 42.1%) followed by internet (36.9%), while books are only at 30.5%. In Spain the situation is similar, even though here the internet (40.5%) had an advantage over TV (34.1%), with books following shortly behind (31.9%). Italy is aligned with other southern countries in its appreciation of the internet (40.4%) but in other respect bucks the general trend: its percentage of readers of books is only 38.7% and it has the lowest level in Europe in its consumption of television (31.9%). Preferences given to other media are not very significant. Media closest to the young. The media that European youth feel closest to them remain television, cell phones and internet. Whereas in Germany and in Great Britain the order in which the three media are placed remains the same (internet, cell phones, television, with internet reaching a level of 62.8% in Germany), the order remains different in the three Latin countries. In France television (60.9%) is followed by cell phones (42.9%) and by internet (37.6%). In Spain the order is television, internet and cell phones, but the percentages of the three media are fairly close to each other. In Italy, lastly, the cell phone takes first place, though television runs it close, and with internet following shortly behind.