Family Lifestyles and Media Use Patterns

Based on results from a comparative survey of Flemish, French, Italian and Swedish children and teenagers, this article analyses the changing patterns of media use in the domestic context. It shows how media use reinforces existing tendencies in family styles: in families where parents give more freedom to their children, privatization of access through media equipment in bedrooms is higher. But this trend towards more individualized access goes along with family collective uses that appear to be still very significant. The survey also shows that new media, more male and youth oriented, such as game consoles or computers, tend to increase gender and generational gaps within the home: older media like television used to operate a segregation by content, new media tend to operate a segregation by access.