Exam Question 3!

With reference to the article and your own research, how has the topic impacted on consumption in your specific media sector? (500 words, 10 marks)

Audience consumption has had a massive impact on consumption in the Television sector. In the 2014 OFCOM report, it states that children aged 12-15 spend more time going online than watching television in a typical week. This relates to my primary research I conducted on survey monkey and I came to a conclusion that when children go online they often go on social media with YouTube and Instagram being the most common ones. Impact on TV consumption for young children has increased over the years, with children preferring to watch television on devices such as smart phones, laptops and tablets/iPads, rather than on an actual Television. This supports one of my key findings in my secondary research, which states that, the amount of time children spends watching TV is ultimately decreasing. This research partly support the report as it talks about the use of Television decreasing by 5-15 year olds. It also undermines my primary research as more children would prefer to use social media than sit in front of the TV. Although the article commonly illustrates children’s consumption in media, especially in the TV sector from 2007, I found through extensive research that the more children consume different media the unhappier they feel and the more antisocial they become. 25% of children watch TV alone, which not only affects the impact on consumption in the media, but also the impact on production. In the article it discusses that TV use by children aged 5-15 is decreasing throughout the years, which could mean that less children are not watching TV on their Television but on their technology devices such as their phones and tablets. Although some of my secondary research I conducted focuses more on the genre of programmes watched by younger children, it also backs up the key facts in the report. In contrast to children watching less TV, I found out through my research that 5 of the most watched programmed by children aged 4-15 were mostly BBC one and ITV. Younger children aged 4-9 watched a similar range of genres, with entertainment programming drawing the largest audiences. In the 2014 OFCOM report that nine in ten parents restricts their child’s access to the internet in many different ways. This differentiates from my secondary research which states that children aged 5-16 were using the internet from over 6+ hours each day. One of my key findings which gave me the conclusion that children weren’t being consumed by television, but their media devices, is my observation primary research where I observed three of my cousins in the living room for an hour and a half. Although they were watching television, they used their media devices to go on social media for the most amount of time. My observation research partly contradicted the report because even though they all had their technology devices, they weren’t glued to it the whole time as they still watched TV. Overall, there are many other sectors that impact on children’s consumption in the media, but I happen to think that TV is the biggest one as it has a broad range of research focus for you to compare with other sources, and it is more discussed about in the article.