Peer effects on youth screen media consumption in Catalonia (Spain)

摘要

It is well known that young people are major consumers of screen media and that their peers are one of the principal determinants of youth behavior as regards their patterns of consumption and other activities. On the basis of these premises, the purpose of this paper is to analyze the influence of classroom peers on youth screen media consumption. More specifically, it considers the time spent watching TV, playing console games and surfing the Internet. Data are drawn from a single representative survey of secondary school students aged 14–16 in Catalonia (Spain) in 2008. Having accounted for problems of endogeneity, our analysis shows that peer consumption has a positive and statistically significant effect on an individual’s console and Internet use. While the magnitude of this effect is not great in the case of the former use, peer effects are quite marked in that of Internet consumption. Moreover, gender differences are observed when media consumption is examined separately. Thus, peer effects on console use are statistically significant only for boys, while the influence of peers on an individual’s Internet use is higher among boys than it is among girls.