244 | nº 28, pp. 241-260 | doxa.comunicación
January-June of 2019
New audiovisual consumption habits among minors: approximation through the analysis of survey data
ISSN: 1696-019X / e-ISSN: 2386-3978
latter is not disappearing, but it does share the spotlight with other devices with different display screens. Furthermore, “this is especially noteworthy in the case of younger users, who change from one device to another throughout the day in order to consume audiovisual content (mobile, tablet, computer...)” (Mena Dávila, 2015: 36).
It is precisely the young people who are the object of this research, as they are the main protagonists of the new audiovisual consumption habits. The report from Limelight Networks (2017), entitled “The State of Online Video”, points out this trend:
Online video viewing continues to grow. Consumers are increasingly taking advantage of the ability to watch what they want according to their own schedules. Globally, people who watch video online view an average of five hours and 45 minutes per week, an increase of 34 percent in less than one year. For people aged 18-25, that number already exceeds seven hours per week, with more than a quarter watching in excess of ten hours of online video each week.
(…) When analysed by age, younger viewers watch more online video per week than older viewers, with people 18-25 watching 7.30 hours per week compared to people over 60, who watch 3.77 hours.
These data can be observed in the following table, where the average weekly hours (last column) is higher among young people aged 18 to 25.
Table 1. Weekly hours of online video viewing.
Source: Limelight Networks (2017).
The data on the habits collected in this report are taken from the responses of adults in France, Germany, India, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, the United Kingdom and the United States. And in Spain? According to the Comisión Nacional de los Mercados y la Competencia (CNMC, 2018), young people between 16 and 24 years of age consume more audiovisual content through their mobile devices than through television, with 4.7 hours a day including the computer, tablet and mobile phone, as opposed to 2.2 hours by television.
Vidales, Aldea and De la Viña (2012) also analyzed television consumption among young people, more specifically those between the ages of 14 and 25, “the segment of the population that currently consumes the least amount of television. In Spain, the rate of this group has fallen below 10 points, from 20% in 1995, for example, to an estimated 6% according to the latest studies by TNS and Estudio General de Medios (EGM) in 2009” (p. 104). In line with the rest of the studies, the authors point out that preferences of young people tend toward on-demand content and the viewing of all types of content distributed by these means on computers and mobile phones. Moreover, they draw valuable conclusions from