Media User Patterns of Adolescents in a Multimedia Environment: An Assessment of Gender and Income Differences

This study attempts to examine the changes in the media use patterns of adolescents in the changing media environment. Previous studies on media users show that gender, age, income and life styles are best predictors of media use patterns. However, this study tries to look at the changes in the influence of these factors. In the digital environment it is impossible to have a full view of the actual usage with the existing methods of measurement. This is because people use the digital media in a very distinctive way. So we adopted a qualitative method in order to fully understand the media use behavior of adolescents. FGI of 47 middle school students in the Seoul area, we found that the gender differences were not as obvious in the sense that most girls and boys use similar media content. However, in the way of usage, boys tend to be more addictive, while girls used a more diverse range of media. Boys did not show differences according to income, whereas girls behavior surrounding the media were difference among different social class. Media was a more important activity to girls, while for boys it was just one of many activities that could be shared with friends.이 연구는 2007년도 정부재원(교육인적자원부 학술연구조성사업비)으로 한국학술진흥재단의 지원을 받아 이루어졌습니다(KRF-2007-321-B00212