The transformation of young people’s online and offline leisure time, spaces and media use in Hungary

A n age group can be considered to be a generation if it is characterised by some common immanent quality, generation knowledge and community feature, and three conditions are necessary for this: common experience; an actual orientation to each other of its members; and a shared interpretation of their situation, attitudes and forms of action (Mannheim 1978). Prensky has interpreted belonging to such an age group in relation to the information society (2001). We consider the development of Prensky’s digital natives-digital immigrants model and incorporate it into the Strauss–Howe model (1991), according to which generation change in Mannheim’s sense takes place in society roughly every 15 to 20 years. Through a theory of socialisation (Nagy 2013b), leisure time and media is seen to play the same role in post-modern society as school socialisation did in modern society and the family did in the pre-modern era. Thus, from the data on youth leisure time we can try to draw a picture of today’s young (Y and Z) generations through their activities and media usage in this regard, confirming the differences between generations. We make use o Hungarian data here, because it derives from large-scale youth research conducted every four years and has been running for one and a half decades (Ifjúság 2000; Ifjúság 2004; Ifjúság 2008; Magyar Ifjúság 2012). This provides an overview of an 8 000-person sample that is representative of age, gender and settlement type in relation to the life situations and way of life of Hungarian youth.

The chapter investigates the leisure time usage both online and offline in the different youth generations (generation X, Z, Y). The authors have found that consumption patterns of generation X is more homogenous, than of the other two generations. While in generation X access can still be a problem for generation Y it is not an issue, and for generation Z being online is part of the socialization. All the three generations spend considerably big portion of their leisure time outside their home, but media usage has a big effect on leisure time thematization. Also, it is important that even when access is available for young people in disadvantaged situations is is much harder to exploit the positive aspects of the online possibilities. "The use of television and especially the internet, as determined by financial situation, draws attention to a major phenomenon. From the data in this chapter it is clear that labour market success, social inclusion, and digital literacy and the use of tools (providing space for equal access of knowledge) remains unattainable for some young Hungarians. Though a whole range of information and communication tools exists that can enable the fulfilment of these criteria, for disadvantaged young people, the minimal use of online tools does not result in, or only does so to some extent, their useful, conscious and knowledge-based use." (Ádám Nagy-Anna Fazekas: The transformation of young people’s online and offline leisure time, spaces and media use in Hungary, in: Magkou et al.: Perspectives on Youth - Young people in a digitalized world, Council of Europe Publishing, Strasbourg (2018), pp:9-28, p:25) "In this chapter, building on Mannheim’s concept of generations, we attempted to distinguish the different age groups based on their leisure-time consumption and their use of ICTs. The results indicate that the “youth of camps” of previous years, by all indications, have morphed into “screenagers” – while revealing many new features about themselves as autonomous culture-creating generations." (Ádám Nagy-Anna Fazekas: The transformation of young people’s online and offline leisure time, spaces and media use in Hungary, in: Magkou et al.: Perspectives on Youth - Young people in a digitalized world, Council of Europe Publishing, Strasbourg (2018), pp:9-28, p:26)