Engl. transl.: JIM 2017: Youth, information, (multi-) media Basic study on media usage by 12 to 19 year olds in Germany

As part of the 2017 JIM study, twelve to 19-year-olds in Germany were asked not only about their general media use, but also about their use of media with regard to homework, learning and school. All in all, according to their own estimates, schoolchildren between the ages of twelve and 19 spend an average of 97 minutes on a weekday with their homework (with and without computer / internet), girls invest 115 minutes more time than boys (80 minutes). The twelve to 19-year-old students work almost half of their study and homework time (45% or 44 minutes) every day at home on the computer or on the Internet for school. The digital homework time increases with increasing age of the young people from a good half an hour for the twelve to 13-year-olds to a good hour for the adult pupils. If, on the other hand, one looks at the use of digital media in schools, so far only the whiteboard (31%) and the computer (22%) have made a significant contribution to everyday school life (use at least several times a week). Smartphones (13%), laptops (9%) or tablet PCs (4%) still do not play a major role. Another consideration of usage at least once a month confirms this picture: only every tenth student uses a tablet PC at school (11%), every fourth a notebook (25%) and every third a smartphone ( 31%). Only whiteboards (43%) and stationary computers (59%) are used by every second student every month. In addition to the frequency with which various digital media are used at school, the 2017 JIM study also looks at the skills of young people in dealing with standard software. The young people were asked to grade themselves how they rate their skills in relation to the basic programs Word, Excel and PowerPoint (or programs from other software providers with comparable functionality). Young people see themselves as particularly fit when it comes to word processing programs such as Word, here every fifth gave themselves a grade of 1, every second rated themselves with a 2. The rating for PowerPoint is similarly positive: almost two thirds of young people give themselves a 1 or 2 when using presentation programs Young people rate their skills in calculation programs such as Excel much worse, here only seven percent give themselves a grade of 1 and a fifth a grade of 2.

For young people, the greatest need for information is about issues that concern themselves: 62 percent find it very important to find out quickly about problems that are of particular importance to them. For more than one in two, it is very important to be informed quickly about current world affairs (56%). Almost half of them are interested in innovations and current developments in the fields of "education / work" (46%) and "music" (45%), while four fifths want to be informed quickly about new developments on the topic of the environment (40%) and world politics (39%). The use of music by 12 to 19-year-olds will occupy first place in 2017 as well, with 60 percent listening to music live on radio stations at least several times a week. YouTube, with 59 percent regular usage, comes in second. Almost every second person listens to music on streaming services such as Spotify Music. A good third of young people listen to music on carrier media at least several times a week. Music usage via streaming services and YouTube has become more relevant in comparison to the previous year. Digital media are also used in the school context. According to their own information, adolescents spend a total of 97 minutes a day on school assignments, and 45% of them work on a computer or on the Internet for school purposes. Focusing on digital devices used at school, stationary computers are used most commonly (79%), and every second student reports that they work at least rarely on a whiteboard (52%), with a smaller percentage (47%) rarely using a smartphone in the classroom. While 37 percent use a notebook, desktop PCs are used less often: here, only one in five has ever had experience with these devices at school. The adolescents were also asked to rate their abilities in the basic programmes Word, Excel, or PowerPoint. Young people see themselves as particularly good at word processing programmes, such as Word, and dealing with presentation programmes like PowerPoint. They rate their skills far lower in calculation programmes such as Excel.