How Children’s Media Lives are Changing

The latest wave of a nine-year study from the OFCOM, the UK’s communications industry regulatory and competition authority, demonstrates dramatic changes in children’s media behavior.

Split Screens and Jumbled Genres  

This year’s report highlights the rising popularity of ‘commentary’ formats with reactions often presented via a split screen (where you can view two videos at once), “mixing news and real-world events with social, emotional, and opinion-based narratives”. Researchers note that while content consumed by 8-17-year-olds is often designed to maximize stimulation and minimize personal investment, the endless “cycles of drama, rivalries, reaction videos and layers of commentary” are blurring the lines between fact and fiction for many of the study’s children. 

Emulating Influencers

 The children in the study were also posting much less frequently themselves, or not at all. Researchers observed that children’s social media feeds were now dominated by professionalized content produced for commercial purposes, and that the kids had shifted, almost entirely, from active participants to passive consumers of content. Those children who did post were often copying the strategies and approaches of others who were getting a lot of engagement online. 

Ask TikTok

The study also shows that children are increasingly using social media like a search engine to answer questions and provide guidance. However, researchers reported that the children in the study rarely reflected on, or even cared about, its veracity, reliability, or relevance.

Oh dear.