Chapter 13
13 New Screens and Young People’s Appropriation
of Entertainment Content
André H. Caron and Letizia Caronia
Acknowledgements
This study was supported by a number of organisations including:
The Bell Chair in Interdisciplinary Research on Emerging
Technologies, The Canada Foundation for Innovation, The Régie
du Cinéma du Québec and the Centre For Youth and Media Studies
(G.R.J.M.) Université de Montréal.
Introduction
New information and communication technologies have become
extremely dynamic. They have permeated our everyday life in many
forms, and provide highly accessible, flexible, interchangeable
multimedia content, particularly via the Internet. While content
has been controlled and regulated, it is now much easier to access
freely, and increasingly independent of any formal institutional
framework. Images on screens used to be viewed in specific
locations and at predictable times. Now, different platforms and
widespread Internet access have allowed these images to transcend
space and time. Multimedia consumption may now be a more
private affair far from adult control and supervision. This raises
new challenges for us all, particularly for institutions that have a
mandate to protect youth in society. We can then rightly ask: How
do young people appropriate and evaluate this content, specifically,
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movie and video game content? Are rating systems still relevant in
these new media environments?
In order to properly investigate such questions we must explore
how young consumers today perceive images displayed on these
new and traditional screens and how they relate to different
discourses in their daily lives as they are influenced by their relations
with their parents and peers. We have to understand the values,
cognitive skills and moral stances that today’s young people have
and develop, especially given that they now live and have grown
up in a hyper-media environment. Some consider young people
to be passive, easy to manipulate, unaware of values, moral or
developmental issues related to media consumption, and entirely
lacking in critical thinking skills. Others see them as active users
able to interpret, judge and choose, and able to use their knowledge
and competencies. Consequently they consider this issue of
consumption of media content in a control-free environment as
relatively unproblematic.
B oth of these scenarios are partial and therefore suspect. If
we accept that today’s teenagers are more media literate than
their counterparts of only ten years ago, the landscape of media
consumption has dramatically changed in terms of quantity, quality
and accessibility. Internet behavior patterns related to streaming
or downloading movies or playing on-line videogames create a
universe of entertainment content appropriation that seems infinite
and, thus, increasingly difficult to control. To address these issues
we need to consider young consumers of these images as active
subjects moving in evolving environments under the influence of
constantly changing new technologies.
Accessing screen images in everyday life
Although limited data are specifically available on the question
of movie downloading and streaming by young people, there are
early indications of its prevalence. For gaming, more data exist
because these usage patterns have been around for a longer time.
Major studies, including the Pew Internet, the Kaiser Family
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Foundation and the Canada Online studies, have recently published
findings on young people’s consumer habits in terms of Internet
uses for movies and games. Yet data on actual movie streaming and
downloading is still approximate. A study (Harris, 2007) involving
a sample of 1,196 youths aged 8-18 years finds that 8% of American
youth admitted to downloading movies without paying. The main
reasons for hesitating to download digital copyright software from
the Internet without paying were viruses (62%), legal trouble
(52%), and spyware (51%). In other words, refraining from such
behavior is motivated less by moral or legal terms and more by
not wanting to corrupt one’s computer. In another American study,
this time limited to adults, Ipsos MediaCT concluded that in 2008,
17% of their sample (n = 935) reported streaming movies and 11%
downloading movies, whether free or paid for.
In a national Canadian study (Zamaria & Fletcher, 2008),
conducted in 2007 with a sample of 400 youth aged 12-17, it was
found that 39% of Canadian youth reported having downloaded/
streamed and watched DVD/movies from the Internet, compared
with only 18% of the adult population. Interestingly, 12- to
17-year-olds reported that they more often watch/listen/stream
DVD/movies (33%) than download (18%) long form content. In
terms of frequency of accessing movies and DVDs online only 3%
of Canadian teenagers reported doing it daily or more frequently,
6% weekly and 30% monthly or less frequently .
A recent study by Pew on video games and civics (Lenhart,
Kahne, Middaugh, Macgill, Evans & Vitak, 2008), involving 1,102
American teenagers of 12-17 and a parent or guardian, finds that
97% of American teens played computer, web, portable or console
videogames, and half of them had played these games the previous
day. The percentage of teens having played video games was
similar in the Canadian study (Zamaria & Fletcher, 2008). Almost
three-quarters of American teens (73%) play games on a desktop
or laptop computer. The Pew study reports that the most frequently
played games in 2007 and 2008 were Guitar Hero (Rhythm), Halo
3 (first-person shooters), Madden NFL (sports, solitaire (Puzzle)
and Dance Dance Revolution (Rhythm). One in three (32%)
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gaming teens report that at least one of their favourite games is
rated Mature or Adults only. One in five (21%) teen gamers play
massive multiplayer online games (MMOGs), which are online
game spaces where multiple individuals play a game together.
A variety of games are thus available on different platforms, as
mentioned in the Pew report:
“More importantly for regulators and parents, different ratings
apply to games played in certain environments. Ratings apply
to console, dedicated handheld gaming devices, and most
computer-based games but are often not given to web-based
games, MMOGs, or games played on cell phones.’’(p.12)
Regarding prevention filters for the Internet, the Pew survey
Teens, Privacy and online Social Network (Lenhart & Madden,
2007) (n = 935, aged 12-17) reports that more then half (53%) of
parents admitted they had filtering software on the computer the
child uses at home and half the teens are generally aware that there
are filters on their computers that keep them from going to certain
websites . Two-thirds of parents report checking up on their teens
after they go online. A majority of American parents (85%) of
online teens say they have rules about Internet sites their child can
visit, and television shows (75%) they can watch, and two-thirds
(65%) restrict the kinds of video games their child can play . The
Parents, Children & Media report of the Kaiser Family Foundation
(Rideout, 2007) states that “the majority of parents say they are
very concerned about the amount of sex and violence in the media
and many believe such content has a real impact on young people’s
behaviors. Two thirds say they would support government policies
to restrict such content on TV” (p.4). A Canadian study (Zamaria &
Fletcher, 2008) shows that 51% of parents say they often monitor
their children’s activities online, but only 17% of teenagers say
that adults often monitor their online activities.
If we combine data referring to young people’s consumption of
multimedia contents with parents’ concern about and supervision
of their youth’s media uses, we gain an interesting insight into
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teenagers’ “moving culture” (Caron,Caronia 2007), actual media
environment and how parents try to assume their role.
The first set of data reveals that young people’s consumption of
multimedia contents (movies and video games) is relatively high
(all platforms included), and that in regard to videogames, one
in three teenagers play “mature” or “adults only” games that are
explicitly rated as such, or play web based videogames that are
often unrated. These environments thus allow teenagers to access
rated and unrated movies and videogames wherever and whenever
they wish, to override filters if they want to, and to transgress by
consuming “adults only” or “mature” contents in more accessible
ways than they ever were capable of in the past.
T he second set of data reveals that parents express concern about
their children’s multimedia consumption and try when possible to
exert control or supervision by using ratings as a reference when
they are made available.
T here clearly appears to be a “zone of discomfort,” a gap
between parents’ attitudes towards performing as “good parents,”
concerned with and committed to their children’s healthy media
diet, and the fact that it is increasingly difficult for them to control
the environment for such consumption.
Given these new technological opportunities, we must take
into account the possibility that the only filters teenagers use
when accessing and consuming these cultural products is their
own cognitive thinking, world views and moral criteria acquired
through their socio-cultural experiences. Is this possible scenario a
social problem? Does consumption of potentially age-inappropriate
content necessarily put teenagers at risk?
Many of these answers and questions depend strictly on the
theoretical frame we adopt in investigating the relationship
between young consumers and multimedia content presented on
their everyday screens. If we adopt the traditional and almost
commonsensical “effect approach,” the answer could only be
“yes.” If, on the contrary, we adopt a more “active user” approach,
then we need to explore the cognitive and moral attitudes of today’s
teenagers in terms of these new screens.
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Fearing the effects of images: A history of common sense
thought about media
Shared ideas about children’s and teenagers’ vulnerability to
media as well as public policies concerned with protecting minors
from inappropriate media contents have a social and cultural
history and an unavoidable inertia. They rest on data, studies and
developmental theories that have been developed in the past, whose
contemporary validity may be considered problematic. Moreover,
these policies are rooted in a social, cultural and psychological
portrait of “children and teens” that does not necessarily mirror the
children and teenagers of today.
A n historical overview of the various discourses on the role
of new technologies in society - for example, radio in the early
20th century or television in the 1950s - shows that discourses are
always constructed around the same recurrent ideas. First, new
media and its content are supposed to have a direct effect on the
psychology of individuals and their social behavior. Every new
technology gives rise to the same traditional fears: it will make
people more aggressive, apathetic or hyper-sexualized, and upset
the established order. Also, media consumption is thought to have
negative effects on human physiology. Finally, the cultural value
of content carried on new media is often considered to be of poorer
quality than that conveyed by earlier media (Wartella & Reeves,
1983; Drotner, 1992).
R arely utopian and very often catastrophic, such forms of
discourse are rooted in academic traditions, and still nurture common
sense opinions. Between pessimistic paranoia and idealistic
optimism, between fear and hope, social discourse shapes thought
with fuzzy, ambiguous contours while building upon a selection of
scientific discourses. Indubitably, the academic tradition that has
had the greatest influence on common sense opinions on young
people and the media is the “Media effect paradigm.”
Theories belonging to this paradigm are generally divided into
two types (Anderson & Bushman, 2001), (Gauntlett, D., 2001).
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Research that focuses on the effects of media exposure independent
of its content, considers that time spent in media consumption and the
less time consequently spent on other activities (family interaction,
reading, sports, etc.), have an effect on health, social and family
behavior (Greenfield, 1984; Valkenburg & Van der Voort, 1995; Pool,
Van der Voort, Beentjes & Koolstra, 2000);
Research that looks at the effects of media in relation to its content,
supposes that there is a direct causal relationship between media content
and young people’s cognitive, social and emotional development
(Nathanson & Cantor, 2000; Anderson & Busman, 2001; Engenfeld-
Nielsen & Smith, 2004; Escobar-Chaves, Tortolero, Markham, Low,
Eitel, & Thickstun, 2005; Brown, Halpen & L’Engle, 2005).
Both traditions share an underlying causal-deterministic model
that accounts for the influence of media on the minds and behavior
of young people. At least within common sense reasoning and
theories, media and media contents are presumed to determine not
only children’s and teenagers’ behaviors but also their attitudes,
relationships and even identities. Often echoed by media discourse
and sometimes reinforced by references to simplified expert
discourse, common sense reasoning and layman theories constitute
a shared cultural system through which we make sense of media
in our daily life.
A lthough the deterministic approach has nurtured common
sense theories more than any other approach, it is not the only
one. The scientific landscape offers at least one other concurrent
approach: the active user perspective. This theoretical approach
emphasizes research that perceives media consumption as a social
practice and considers that the analysis of cultural contexts and the
users’ active roles are essential in understanding what people do
with media (Katz, Blumler & Gurevitch, 1974; Arnett, Larsen &
Offer, 1995; Sorensen Holmes & Jessen, 2000; Williams & Skoric,
2005; Jonhson, 2005).
While the “effect approach” very often underestimates users’
competences and paints a picture of a helpless, vulnerable victim,
the “active user” approach attributes to users and those close to
them responsibility for their media consumption and construction
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of the meaning of images. This emphasis on the cultural context
and the consumers’ active role in making sense of media and media
content underscores the necessity to constantly monitor the ways
in which a changing active audience copes with new multimedia
products.
Another aspect of society that evolves as well is it’s approache
to child rearing. Such methods, shaped by scientific and public