The sobriquet “Media Generation” clearly fits the current cohort of America's young people as they enter the twenty-first century. Today's youth spend more time with more media than any generation before them, and there is every reason to assume that both their media use and exposure will continue to increase. The environment of today's kids – their homes, their schools, the automobiles they ride in, and, we suspect, most of their other gathering places – is filled with media of all kinds. Their bedrooms contain televisions, print materials, radios and audio systems, game systems, and, increasingly, computers. They choose content from dozens of TV channels and radio stations, hundreds of print publications, thousands of videos, and virtually an unlimited number of websites. More and more they carry miniaturized versions of most media with them wherever they choose to go; more and more they use multiple media simultaneously. It is no exaggeration to say that in the United States today the average junior high student spends more time with media than he or she devotes to any other waking activity. A typical 11- to 14-year-old gives more than 6½ hours per day to media, and because he or she often uses several media simultaneously, encounters almost 8 hours per day of media content.

On the other hand, in addition to illustrating that the average U.S. 12- to 13-year-old is awash in media messages, this study also demonstrates that there is nothing so elusive as “the average kid.” Every bit as noteworthy as the substantial amounts of time that some young people devote to media is the remarkable variation among kids in how much and what they are exposed to, and under what conditions. Some kids encounter media a good deal more than 8 hours per day, others a good deal less. Some devote most of their media time to television, others to print, others to music media.