“What you say about what you watch on television serves

to define your identity, in terms of age and gender,

but also in terms of ethnicity and cultural origin”

(de Block en Buckingham, p. 107).

What is said in this little phrase, actually already summarizes the main content of the study done in the article I summarize below. Depending on your ethnical and cultural background, your gender and your age you watch certain television programs, a certain amount of time and in a certain social context. Since media has such a prominent place in today’s live, it is important to also understand what kind of differences there are in media use between different groups, and how this can influence the way children/young adults look towards the world. If you know in what kind of media world your students live, you can connect to them, which makes interaction and communication easier. You can also understand differences in the way people reflect the world against the media world.
By knowing what interests children on TV and in the media, you can make connections to the subjects you want to teach.

Young people in the twenty-first-century live in a 'multi-TV set environment' with an average of 2.54 television sets per family. These TV sets are spread throughout the entire house and also their own bedroom. Striking variables include gender and age: boys own more TV’s than girls and the older the young people are, the more likely they have their own device at their disposal.

In addition to 'old' media, 'new' media are well integrated into the daily life of today’s youth. Forty percent reported having surfed online or have been active on social networking sites over the past day. Listening to music remains a popular activity among young people, as opposed to reading newspapers, which is not popular among young people. Watching television remains the most popular medium of media and is integrated into the daily life of both boys and girls.

The media usage of young people is characterized by multitasking, with mobile phone use and Internet surfing being the most combined with watching TV. Viewing motives: girls have higher scores for exploration and escapism; boys prefer social inclusion as the main reason to watch television. Age is also important: older youth (17-19 years) show lower scores for entertainment, social inclusion and escapism, but they have higher scores for knowledge than 14 to 16 year olds. This can be explained by older teenagers watching less TV by preferring other activities that take place outside of the house. Finally, second-generation immigrant and native-born youth have significantly higher entertainment scores than first-generation immigrants. One possible explanation is the fact that first generation foreigners do not yet master the language and less understand the programs. On the other hand, it appears that immigrant youth indicate significantly more television watching in order to gain knowledge about the world than indigenous young people.

TV and TV shows prove to be a topic of discussion among young people and their relatives, and by class analysis we distinguish highly communicative and less communicative profiles among young people. These communication patterns are different for boys and girls. For example, girls talk more often than boys about television. Girls appear to be talking more often than boys talking to their mother about TV; this is because girls often watch TV with their mother. A clear link between viewing partner and communication partner is thus visible. When young people talk about TV, it's mostly about what happened in the past episode, followed by jokes and certain statements of characters, the characters themselves, what can happen in the next episode, the actors and their clothes. Striking is that the program maker or the director is rarely mentioned. When young people cannot talk about a particular program, this was experienced as annoying and annoying. This bring a certain social pressure, if all children in your class watch a certain TV program or show, you are kind of expected to watch it yourself too, otherwise you fall out of the group (same is true for computer game, video clip etc.).

To gain better insight into the authority of the parents in the viewing behaviour of young people, it was identified which programs are prohibited. 15% of respondents indicate that there are programs they cannot watch. These are especially erotic and pornographic programs with a 16+ or 18+ label. Boys more often indicate that certain programs are prohibited from girls. Logically, age also shows significant differences: as children get older, fewer programs are banned. It is also remarkable that immigrant youth from both the first and second generation say significantly more that they are not allowed to watch a program.

Besides television, computers and laptops are often present in a family. This study indicates that a Flemish family in 2009 has 2.66 computers at their disposal. They thus have on average more computers and laptops than television sets. Students from vocational education have significantly less access to a PC, just like immigrants. Six out of ten young people have their own PC in the bedroom and girls have significantly less their own PC than boys. The older you get, the more access to your own PC in the room. An internet connection is available for 93% of the young people. A young person who has their own PC in the bedroom, in 88% of the cases, has an internet connection for this computer, and gender also gives significant differences: boys have more PCs with internet than girls.

Young people surf the most to Youtube and Facebook, which shows the importance of social networking sites in the lives of young people. It is also apparent that girls are much more involved with social networking sites (36.8% versus 26.1%) than boys, and send more e-mails (15.6% versus 9.4%).

We can decide that the "old" medium television still holds a prominent place in the lives of young people. Media - and especially visual media - play a very important role in the private bedroom of young people. However, despite this tendency to privatize media, young people still prefer to watch TV together above watching TV in their own bedroom. Watching television together also allows young people and their relatives to interact and communicate on television and television programs.