Youth and New Media in the New Millennium

There is general agreement among media and communication scholars that a monumental shift is occurring in the media and communication habits of young people. In the present paper, this shift is discussed within the framework of a long-term study of six samples of Icelandic youths, covering a period of 35 years. A persistent decline in use of the “old” media, such as books, newspapers and radio is demonstrated, while the social role of television is shown to be undergoing a transformation comparable to what happened to book reading centuries earlier. All this is discussed in the light of the onslaught of new technologies and new media of communication.