Gender and Age Features of Media Consumption: Results of the Survey of People Aged 12-20

Interest in studying the influence of media on the development of children has persisted for more than 50 years in psychology. Recently, this interest has been intensified by changes in the structure of media consumption related to the preference of internment technologies for traditional media. Analysis of demographic factors of media consumption allowed to determine their influence on the choice of media means and content, type of use, motives of consumption and strategies of development. At the same time, insufficient attention is paid to stylistic peculiarities of media consumption. The aim of the study was to study differences in media consumption styles in groups of different ages and sex. Comparison of the results of the survey of people of different ages (students of 12-14 years, high school students of 15-16 years and students of 17-20 years) and of different sex is the basis of the study. 210 people took part in the survey. Questionnaire by Y.N. Dolgov et al. The "Individual media consumption style" was used to collect empirical data. The results of the study confirmed the hypothesis of sex and age differences in the frequency and style of use of different medical facilities. They showed that adolescents prefer to search for information on the internet. The frequency of using television, the internet and journal to search for information has an inverted U-shaped dependence on age. The frequency of access to books and newspapers has a linear dependence on age. Schoolchildren (12-14 years old) have a critical-controlling type of media consumption, high school students (15-16 years old) have an involved critical-controlling type of media consumption, and students (17-22 years old) have an unobstructed critical-controlling type of media consumption. The level of will control and reflexive criticality of media consumption increases when moving from the younger age group to the older age group. The level of content reflection and information search efficiency is higher in men than in women.