Change of Screen

IE Focus | By Enrique Dans, Professor at IE Business School

Television is dead. And not only television, but all the other classic media based on unidirectional communication, because the young are changing the rules. A recent study on teenagers´ habits carried out in the United States reveals of how the way information is consumed in our society has changed over the years: the classic one-way media, such as television, have died a death. The medium that was considered for many years as a bastion of North American culture and which still brings together multimillion audiences for events such as the Super Bowl final is being abandoned by young people in their droves. Time spent in front of the TV has fallen drastically and those who still watch it do so on a different screen: their computer.

The final nail in TV’s coffin has been hammered home, as expected, by the social network. The use of the social network confirms that the absurd fears of some adults for the alleged “isolation” of young people in front of the screen (“they don´t go out any more”, “I prefer my computer to seeing my friends”, “they are so pale because they get no sunshine and only get radiation from the screen”) were unfounded fears: the young people who are the most active on the net are also the most active off the net… they have more friends, go out more and go to more parties.