Gen Z spends half their waking time on screens

[JINSBEK]

Gen Z spends half its waking hours on screen time. Here’s the good and bad news for Hollywood
The Los Angeles Times - 2022 April 12
https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-a ... -wide-shot

Excerpts:

...The good news for media companies is that Gen Z spends a lot of time on screens. This cohort of consumers, born in and after 1996, watches an average of 7.2 hours of video a day, which is nearly an hour more than the 6.3 hours spent by Gen X, according to new market research provided exclusively to The Times. Assuming (naively, of course) that people get the recommended eight hours of sleep a day, that’s nearly half of young folks’ waking hours captured by brightly lit rectangles.

However, while typical 13- to 26-year-olds consume content pretty much all day, they are not watching in the same way as previous generations.

Their viewing changes throughout the day. The typical Gen Z-er’s media diet starts with casually scrolling TikTok and Reels in the morning, switching to YouTube around lunchtime and turning to Netflix or Hulu in the evening for the latest must-see comedy or drama, according to the survey commissioned by music video platform Vevo and media agency Publicis Media.

“Video has essentially become a friend to Gen Z,” said Laura Vanison, Vevo’s senior director of consumer and artist insights. “It’s rewarding. It’s keeping you company. It’s not just for relaxation at the end of the day once you’ve fulfilled all of your life’s obligations and duties.”

Much of Gen Z’s viewing time is dedicated to user-generated content — TikTok influencers and amateur YouTube creators — rather than traditional longform stuff (i.e. movies and TV shows). Nearly half (48%) of video watched by Gen Z-ers was made by content creators outside of the world of traditional entertainment professionals. Meanwhile, Gen X consumers’ viewing was 72% professionally produced.

(The original report is available to premium members of the American National Association of Advertisers.)

With 93% of American Gen Zers admitting to staying up at night and losing sleep to social media, and 46% having trouble falling asleep on more than half the week, I don’t think this bodes well for the overall well-being of that generation. Boomers were made fun of for being the first to be glued to television screens, but at least that was constrained to the end of the day, and not nearly as likely to keep people up compared to compulsive endless scrolling. Knowing the concrete numbers also gives one a better idea of the directions media moguls and marketers will take with regards to media and advertisement production...

[Stefen_Maxwell]

Oh god, I am in this demographic.

[JINSBEK]

Oh god, I am in this demographic.

You and 2 billion others, haha. Outside of the frightening health implications of this, the effects on language and culture is going to be quite fascinating (and probably very sad, in my opinion). My fiancée credits this perpetual screentime with the washing away of the Australian accents in her generation (she’s also part of Gen Z) and those younger than her. Now, Hollywood has always been a behemoth in cultural exports, but people could see a Mickey Mouse movie or Jurassic Park, go home, and still hear, converse, and joke with others in the same local tongues relatively unaffected by the one or two motion pictures they saw that week. It’s different when you’re consuming largely American video media over 7 hours of your day every single day. She’s in Queensland, and her female Gen Z coworkers say “girl” with a US East Coast accent and intonation, presumably because that’s where from the TikTokers that they’re watching are.

[Boom!]

Oh god, I am in this demographic.

You and 2 billion others, haha. Outside of the frightening health implications of this, the effects on language and culture is going to be quite fascinating (and probably very sad, in my opinion). My fiancée credits this perpetual screentime with the washing away of the Australian accents in her generation (she’s also part of Gen Z) and those younger than her.

I have been experiencing something very similar, I’ve moved all over the U.S. and even since I was younger I’ve heard the accents fade. I’m currently in the deep south and it’s crazy to see how it’s only the adults who have the prominent accent. Everybody still has small distinctions for each area they’re from but it’s so faint you have to actively listen to it. Spending so much time listening to other people’s accents on the internet even though people don’t notice it changes how they speak, and in my opinion how they act. It’s scary to see how people on the internet after a while meld together into the same person because it’s what’s popular and what they see the most.

[Crazyroostereye]

I notice it in Bavaria to, a place with a very Distinct German Accent. First the Anglofication of the Language as more and more English word are sneaking into the Common usage. Furthermore, the Accent is Disappearing to. I notice how more and more people here speak High German (Default German) or a weaker Bavarian Accent and I come from a Rural Region. It isn't too bad as still many People speak it, but it isn't as prominent as it is in the Older Generation.

And our Government isn't helping either, by reducing the amount of German specific letters from Word usage (primarily the ß). Yes we do have Governmental authority that sets Grammar and spelling rules.

[JINSBEK]

I have been experiencing something very similar, I’ve moved all over the U.S. and even since I was younger I’ve heard the accents fade. I’m currently in the deep south and it’s crazy to see how it’s only the adults who have the prominent accent. Everybody still has small distinctions for each area they’re from but it’s so faint you have to actively listen to it. Spending so much time listening to other people’s accents on the internet even though people don’t notice it changes how they speak, and in my opinion how they act. It’s scary to see how people on the internet after a while meld together into the same person because it’s what’s popular and what they see the most.

I think on one hand, it’s a natural part of culture to pick up the mannerisms and such from the people you converse with (or I guess, passively consume video content of). There was definitely a distinct “Internet voice” back in the mid-2000s, everyone had kind of the same sense of humour. Reddit was my favourite example of this: all the comments and replies were building up on each other’s jokes, often trying to one-up the previous in terms of absurdity and raucousness. 4chan has its own vibe, so does Newgrounds, SomethingAwful, etc.

I don’t think this is an inherently bad process at all. What bothers me is that the quality of the culture being disseminated is lacking. I’m very sensitive to vocal quality, as a highly musical person (I’ve been a chorister in middle school, high school, and college), and it highly distresses me to hear the deadening lack of variety of pitches, rhythm, timing, use of staccato etc. in young people’s spoken language today. It’s all very boring. I can watch an episode of Are You Being Served? and hear a great diversity of affective content and texture in the delivery of everyone’s lines, and I hear not even a quarter of that in young people today, outside of those very involved in music and theatre. My fiancee complains that it’s impossible for her to stand for long listening to her fellow Gen Z’ers, because they sound so dead compared to everyone from any other generation—the exception being the very rural communities. That’s true for Australia and Minnesota.

Oh, and it’s funny you mention the Deep South… Pre-COVID, I was in Trafford, Alabama (don’t ask) and the older autistic woman I was staying with was very animated, expressive, theatrical. Her kids are very young, comparatively speaking, the two oldest are Gen Z. Now, she talks a lot to them, but their accents were not even half as pronounced as hers. In her very youngest child, barely 5 at the time, I heard no accent at all. In Trafford, Alabama.

I notice it in Bavaria to, a place with a very Distinct German Accent. First the Anglofication of the Language as more and more English word are sneaking into the Common usage. Furthermore, the Accent is Disappearing to. I notice how more and more people here speak High German (Default German) or a weaker Bavarian Accent and I come from a Rural Region. It isn't too bad as still many People speak it, but it isn't as prominent as it is in the Older Generation.

And our Government isn't helping either, by reducing the amount of German specific letters from Word usage (primarily the ß). Yes we do have Governmental authority that sets Grammar and spelling rules.

Oh! Germany is reducing the use of the ß now? Wow, I can’t say I understand certain aspects of the 1996 reform... Mißstand → Missstand looks like a trainwreck. As for decreasing regional German accents, that’s fascinating, and saddening to hear. I am not familiar with that, and I wonder how long it has been happening? An interesting comparison, I remember watching a 1992 Dutch film years ago and being shocked at the American English casually being spoken in the contemporary scenes, by different characters. I was expecting a much harder, heavier Dutch accent… And also more Dutch?? Haha.