While people over 50 years of age spend an average of six hours a day sitting in front of the TV (an increase of 6% since 2012), young people between 18 and 24 years old spend less than two hours a day consuming TV content (a drop of 44% compared to five years ago).

The question worth asking is why these changes in young people’s consumption habits are taking place. González Aldea and López Vidales (2011) consider it to be related “to the new media, the multiplication of ‘screens’, and the arrival of a new type of content: segmented content for fragmented audiences. It is the phenomenon of the ‘youtubisation of television’ (p. 37), where the consumption of information and entertainment videos is predominant among young people. Their summary is this: different content for different devices.

Sánchez Vilela (2016, online) reflects on how television viewing is an mark of identity, “a process of forming a differentiated lifestyle”, and he describes it as follows: “(...) the generalized habit in the new ways of watching television among young people implies decisions in a double interlinkage: the choice of devices that allow mobility and the choice of specific television programmes/content that are embedded in the task of shaping their daily lives”.

As we have seen, the research highlights an evolution in consumption characterised by a clear tendency among young people to consume more audiovisual content through OTT (Over-The-Top) platforms than through traditional or linear television. Is it due to a generational change? Galán Fajardo and Del Pino Romero (2009) recall how often they hear stereotypical claims that today’s young people are “very different from those of previous generations; and to a large extent that statement is true, because the society in which these young people live is not the same, nor is the prevailing political and economic system” (p. 4) the same, nor in the case that concerns us, the technology at their disposal.

Bearing all of this in mind, the approach we have used aims to provide new data regarding the investigation of this trend of change among young people, notably minors, given the undeniable conditioning that it represents in the ways and means of creating, producing and distributing audiovisual products aimed at an audience that consumes in a certain way, and whose characteristics we intend to describe on a small scale.

2. Methodology

All of the above provides the necessary theoretical basis and background for carrying out this study, the ultimate objective of which is to ascertain the audiovisual consumption of young people between the ages of 14 and 17. In this research, we also intend to gain knowledge regarding the role played by minors in online video platforms, especially their role as prosumers, as well as to contextualize the changes in consumption and to reflect on the possible opportunities and/or risks of this new model.

To this end, at the beginning of the research the following questions were asked: What is the current situation of audiovisual consumption in Spain? Why has this evolved toward the digital environment? What type of content do minors see in online platforms?