Fun Isn't Fun Enough for Teens

Times/Bloomberg poll suggests 12- to 24-year-olds are bored with their entertainment options.

By Robin Abcarian and John Horn
Times Staff Writers

10:55 AM PDT, August 6, 2006

With their vast arsenals of electronic gear, they are the most entertained generation ever. Yet the YouTubing, MySpacing, multi-tasking teens and young adults widely seen as Hollywood's most wanted audience are feeling — can it be? — a bit bored with it all.

A new Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll, the first in a series of annual entertainment surveys, finds that a large majority of the 12- to 24-year-olds surveyed are bored with their entertainment choices some or most of the time, and a substantial minority think that even in a kajillion-channel universe, they don't have nearly enough options. "I feel bored like all the time, 'cause there is like nothing to do," said Shannon Carlson, 13, of Warren, Ohio, a respondent who has an array of gadgets, equipment and entertainment options at her disposal but can't ward off ennui.

They do seem to be passionate about their electronic devices, though, especially their computers, which ranked even above cellphones when respondents were offered a "desert island" choice of one item. Still, the poll suggests that the revolution in entertainment, media and technology that many in Hollywood are already developing strategies for has not yet taken hold.

For example, respondents say that traditional sources such as television advertising and radio airplay still tend to drive their decisions about movies and music more than online networking sites. Those interested in keeping up with current events report a surprising interest in conventional news sources, especially local TV news. And although many see their computers as a perfectly good place to watch a TV show or a movie, there does not appear to be widespread desire to take in, say, "Spider-Man 3" on their video iPods.

But there's little comfort here for movie theater owners. The multiplex isn't very popular either.

Even though 2006's box-office grosses are running 7% ahead of last year's, the poll found waning interest in seeing movies in theaters. Although the youngest teens say they're hitting the multiplex as often as ever, many young adults report that they're seeing fewer films in theaters. The main complaints are pricey tickets and concessions, but rude moviegoers and "bad movies" are factors too.

"It doesn't seem like there's anything good," says Emma Standring-Trueblood, a 16-year-old who is soon to start her junior year at Oak Park High School near Agoura Hills. "I'd say a good episode of 'The West Wing' is better than most of the stuff that gets out there."

A signature trait of those surveyed is a predilection for doing several things at the same time, with the majority of females in every age group and males from 15 to 17 and 21 to 24 saying they prefer to multi-task rather than to do one thing at a time.

Nathaniel Johnson, a 17-year-old senior at Claremont High School who took part in the survey, spoke for the 62% of boys in his age group who like to multi-task. He's a big fan of what the computer allows him to do: "You can open five or six programs simultaneously: work on a project, type a report, watch YouTube, check e-mail and watch a movie."

Unlike some of his peers, who report doing as many as four or five things simultaneously — such as homework, instant messaging, surfing the Net, talking on the phone and listening to music — Nathaniel discovered through trial and error that he can do only three things well at a time. "Generally," he said, "you feel overwhelmed at some point if you are trying to do too many things at once."

Like many others surveyed, Nathaniel rarely does his homework in a quiet environment. For him, homework and hard rock are inseparable. "Most people think it's horribly distracting," he said, "but I did get a 4.0 GPA." (A small number of the multi-taskers managed to fit in a video game too, but the great majority of young males who play video games — including 74% of younger teens — do not engage in other activities while doing so.)

Young people multi-task, they say, because they are too busy to do only one thing at a time, because they need something to do between commercials or, for most (including 64% of girls 12 to 14), it's boring to do just one thing at a time.

The poll, under the supervision of Los Angeles Times Poll Director Susan Pinkus, interviewed 839 teenagers (ages 12 to 17) and 811 young adults (18 to 24) from June 23 to July 3 using the Knowledge Networks' Web panel, which provides a representative sample of U.S. households. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 3 percentage points for both age group samples.

Maybe it is part of the human condition that the young are bored, but some think that this generation — children of baby boomers, sometimes called millennials — has been spoiled by the sheer volume of entertainment and technology choices available.

"I think there is more media gratification that younger people feel entitled to," said Jordan Levin, who should know. Levin, a former chief executive of the WB network, was instrumental in developing the hit young adult shows "Felicity" and "Buffy the Vampire Slayer."

Levin is now a partner in Generate, an entertainment company whose programs, thanks to an exclusive deal with MTV Networks, will be seen on television, cellphones and the Internet. Kids, Levin said, "have grown up in an environment where they expect to get what they want, where they want it, when they want it."

Throughout Hollywood, the race is on to develop entertainment that captures the attention of this distracted generation. The head of MTV Films just left to start a Viacom division that will make episodic shows for cellphones, iPods and computers. BitTorrent, once known as a top site for Internet pirates, has begun serving original — and lawfully shared — programming.

The studios also are looking to video games for artistic inspiration, which makes sense given the poll finding that 67% of boys ages 12 to 17 regularly play games on their computers. Among the game-inspired movies in the works: "Halo," "Hitman" and a sequel to "Resident Evil."

Some theater owners have taken notice of the huge teen demand for video games. National Amusements is renovating a theater to create a CyberZone video gaming site in Ypsilanti, Mich., which will offer nearly 80 PCs, PlayStations and Xboxes in an area adjacent to its movie screens.

Despite the technological advances that are changing the way entertainment is delivered and consumed, good, old-fashioned word of mouth — with a tech twist, thanks to text messaging — continues to be one of the most important factors influencing the choices that young people make.

As the Times/Bloomberg poll found, those recommendations (or pans) play a significant role in determining attendance. When asked how soon after seeing a movie they told their friends about it, 38% of teens and 40% of young adults said they told their friends the same day. "Those text messages are a very powerful tool," said Jeff Blake, chairman of marketing and distribution for Sony Pictures Entertainment. "You certainly have the feeling that what they say in their text messages is just as important — if not more important — as the quote we put at the top of our ad. These kids listen to each other."

When it comes to the content of their entertainment, those surveyed tended to be quite tolerant of depictions of violence, gross-out humor and swearing in movies.

Yet a surprisingly high number of teenage boys (58%) and even more teenage girls (74%) said they were offended by material they felt disrespected women and girls. (How they reconcile that with their preference for the often-sexist aesthetic of rap music, the top music choice among respondents who specified a genre, is a topic for another poll.) Respondents who considered themselves religious were much more likely to be offended by gay and lesbian content. Young men 18 to 24 aren't offended by much; even material that disrespects women bothers only about 40% of this group.

Twelve-year-old Melina Erkan, a seventh-grader in Monroe, Conn., said she used to watch a lot of music videos on MTV and VH1 but has become increasingly turned off by the prevalent images of scantily dressed women. "Sometimes in the music videos these days, the women they have dancing in the background, they dress really cheap, and women don't really look like that and act like that," she said. "When I see that, I change the channel to something I like."

Hannah Montee, a 21-year-old college student in Liberal, Mo., said she had practically stopped watching TV because of all the vulgarity she saw. "I get tired of hearing all the cussing and the sexual innuendoes," she said.

Younger teens report that their parents keep a tight rein on their entertainment and technology habits. Nearly 3 out of 5 in this group say their parents restrict what they download, whether it's music or movies or other content. And although for many teenagers adult intrusion is unwelcome, parents can take some solace in the fact that about 15% of 12- to 17-year-olds answered "my parents" when asked how they found out about the music they'd most recently acquired.

Only 4% of the 12- to 17-year-olds reported that their parents didn't know much about their entertainment and communication choices. About a quarter of young teenage boys said they fought with their parents about video games or the music they listened to, whereas girls tended to fight with their parents about cellphone usage. (Girls play video games, but fewer than 1% of female poll respondents of all ages said they would choose a video game console if they could have only one item on a desert island from a list that also included a computer, a cellphone, a television, an iPod or an MP3 player.)

Renee Hampton, a 14-year-old ninth-grader in Chapmansboro, Tenn., battles with her parents over the time she spends online. Though most teens her age report spending less than two hours a day on the computer, Renee said that this summer she was spending eight hours a day online. "My parents think I need to get outside more," she said. "I say that I get outside enough."

Renee loves Japanese cartoons and spends a lot of her online time creating animated music videos with anime characters, which she posts on the phenomenally popular site YouTube.com. Certain websites, she reported, are off-limits, but she wasn't sure why.

"Hey, Mom," she said. "Why are you against MySpace?"

"I have heard too many things about perverts on there and that it's not a good place for children," her mother replied.

"Mom," Renee said, "that's so stupid."

Renee may be frustrated, but her peers reported similar parental involvement. About a third of boys and girls ages 12 to 14 said their parents didn't let them go on social networking sites such as MySpace. About 15% of the kids 15 to 17 said their parents restricted access, but by age 18, parental control had melted away.

Another concern for adults is multi-tasking. For the most part, experts have not looked closely at how teens' and young adults' thinking skills, especially when it comes to homework, may be affected by what one software executive has dubbed "constant partial attention."

"It's like being in a candy store," said Gloria Mark, a UC Irvine professor who studies interactions. between people and computers. "You aren't going to ignore the candy; you are going to try it all."

Mark, who has studied multi-tasking by 25- to 35-year-old high-tech workers, believes that the group is not much different from 12- to 24-year-olds, since both groups grew up with similar technology. She frets that "a pattern of constant interruption" is creating a generation that will not know how to lose itself in thought.

"You know the concept of 'flow'?" asked Mark, referring to an idea popularized by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi about the benefits of complete absorption and focus. "You have to focus and concentrate, and this state of flow only comes when you do that Maybe it's an old-fogy notion, but it's an eternal one: Anyone with great ideas is going to have to spend some time deep in thought."