Youth, media and technology : Practices and habits of media students in accessing information

Abstract

As part of the project “Media Literacy in Higher Education: an exploratory study with Social Communication students”, the authors intend to assess the degree of media literacy of students attending a course in Media Studies. This article analyses the data that crosses the answers to an online questionnaire with the results of a focus group, instruments applied to first-year undergraduate students in the scope of media consumption habits and practices. The results show the prevalence of screens, especially social media and television, as means of information consumption and point to the prevalence of the smartphone and the replacement of entertainment consumption on television by streaming platforms. The relevance and contribution of this study involve the idea of change in consumption habits, with special emphasis on a generational group, which is in training to exercise a profession in social communication. Given the change in the communicational paradigm, media education continues to play a fundamental role in developing critical thinking to understand this change and its implications in the current society of screens, where information overload reigns and consumption is differentiated.