Engl. transl.: JIM 2020: Youth, information, (multi-) media Basic study on media usage by 12 to 19 year olds in Germany

The year 2020 turned the everyday life of young people upside down: Most of the leisure activities were not possible, schools were closed for weeks and months and some learning was done via distance learning. Accordingly, changes in the media behavior of young people could also be expected. In 2020, the young people experienced a significant boost in equipping them with media devices. Personal ownership of a computer or laptop increased from 65 to 72 percent, and that of your own tablet from 25 to 38 percent. Every third young person now has a television with Internet access. The special situation in 2020 also resulted in significantly longer media usage times. According to the young people, the daily internet usage time has increased significantly from 205 minutes in 2019 to 258 minutes in 2020.

When comparing the results to last year’s, an increase in media devices is clear, especially the increase in wearables (+12 percentage points), streaming boxes/sticks (+11 percentage points), tablets (+10 percentage points), smart speakers (+10 percentage points), and laptops (+9 percentage points). Schools and learning have been dominated by the pandemic in 2020: school closures and home-schooling have defined an everyday life that is anything but ordinary for young people. The prevailing teaching model of the coronavirus crisis is the hybrid form of teaching in which pupils have both attendance phases in school and periods where they must study at home. At the time of this study, 69 % of the young people interviewed were being taught with such a model. 57 % of the pupils receive teaching materials and tasks by email, 55 % use a school-based cloud or the school’s own online platform. Almost one third are taught conventionally with printed books while one quarter use a video conferencing system. Using chat apps such as WhatsApp for communication and exchanging teaching materials accounts for just under 15 %. Overall, online-learning for schools has been rated on average with a grade of 2.7 (1 being excellent and 6 a fail). Noteworthy is the fact that the older classes in particular (against the background of their preparations for their final exams) are dissatisfied with the requirements of self-guided and selforganised learning. The fear that health problems could occur within their personal environment is a key concern among the young people. These fears are directed, however, much more towards their own family than towards themselves. Over half of those interviewed said they missed meeting with friends, sporting activities, and attending parties and events. The internet is the central everyday medium: 89 % of young people are online every day. According to their own estimates, daily usage time rose sharply to 258 minutes (205 minutes in 2019) during coronadominated 2020. Entertainment accounts for the largest percentage of online usage (34 %). Communication (27 %) and games (28 %) have an almost equal share. Searching for information accounts for 11 % of daily usage time. With regards to gender distribution, differences are particularly evident in the areas of communication and games. One third of online use by girls is spent on the area of communication whereas for boys it is only 23 %. Conversely, boys spent a much higher percentage of their time (34 %) on games (girls: 19 %). Both genders devote roughly one tenth of their online time to searching for information. (boys: 12 %, girls: 11 %). Concerning dealing with harassment or hate on the Internet, currently 29 % of the young people interviewed stated that false or offensive things had been spread about them. After years with relatively stable values of approximately 20 %, this is a significant increase. Boys are slightly more affected by this problem than girls and especially older youths report such offensive content and comments much more frequently. A possible reason for this could be the lack of physical gatherings and face-to-face communication. This has shifted a considerable part of daily communication to the Internet and, as a result, these values are based on a significantly higher volume of communication. Furthermore, more than half of those interviewed were confronted with hate messages on the Internet in the space of a month. Almost half of the young people reported encountering extreme political views and conspiracy theories on the Internet. 37 % reported insulting comments, for example on social networks, and every third person encountered fake news. Only one quarter of the young people could say that they had not been confronted with any of these phenomena within the last month.