Special Issue: 2006's Most Consequential Clips

QUOTE: "To find something comparable to [the Internet], you have to go back 500 years to the printing press, the birth of mass media—which, incidentally, is what really destroyed the old world of kings and aristocracies. Technology is shifting power away from the editors, the publishers, the establishment, the media elite. Now it's the people who are taking control. ... The Internet is media's golden age." —News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch [Wired, 7/06]

QUOTE: "As consumers generate media themselves, the idea of an authoritative voice becomes more diluted. What is an authoritative voice? Is it a popular teenager, a brand, a magazine, a journalist or best friend? The whole thing is very fudgeable." —Jon Gibs, director of media analytics at Nielsen/NetRatings Inc. [AP, 8/29/06]

QUOTE: "MySpace is a cultural requirement for American high school students. Or, as one teenager said, 'If you're not on MySpace, you don't exist.' Not all MySpace users are teenagers, but most American teenagers have accounts on MySpace." —Danah Boyd, a University of California-Berkeley doctoral student researching teens' interactions with social networking sites. In September, MySpace profiles numbered 106 million, with approximately 230,000 new users registering daily. The giant social networking site closed out the year with about 145 million profiles. [danah.org/papers/MySpaceDOPA.html, 5/24/06; wikipedia.com, 1/3/07; myspace.com]

According to the 2006 Teen Trends study conducted by the Harrison Group, teens spend 72 hours a week interacting with electronic media (cell phones, the Internet, television, music and video games). The survey of 1,000 teens ages 13 to 18 found that 68% had created a profile on a social networking site such as MySpace, Xanga or Facebook. [news.com, 12/7/06]

November YouTube traffic hit 25.5 million visitors, up from 900,000 a year earlier. Such stratospheric usage stats prompted Google, the Internet's most popular search engine, to purchase the explosively popular video-sharing site for a staggering $1.65 billion in October. [latimes.com, 10/11/06; bloomberg.com, 10/10/06; usatoday.com, 12/26/06]

QUOTE: "In our time, it has generally been thought bad and unhealthy to 'repress' inhibitions. Spend a few days inside the new world of personal blogs, however, and one might want to revisit the repression issue." —Daniel Henninger, deputy editor of the Wall Street Journal's editorial page [opinionjournal.com, 4/21/06]

QUOTE: "Watching YouTube is far closer to consuming Internet pornography than staring at the television. ... But then, all media culture has an increasingly pornographic feel, doesn't it?" —Slate television critic Troy Patterson [Slate, 10/18/06]

Americans are more isolated today than 20 years ago, according to research published in the American Sociological Review. The General Social Survey indicates that nearly a quarter of Americans (24.6%) have no one with whom they can talk about personal problems, compared to just 10% who reported similar disconnection in 1985. Duke sociologist Lynn Smith-Lovin commented, "[People] may have 600 friends on facebook.com and e-mail 25 people a day, but they are not discussing matters that are personally important." [washingtonpost.com, 6/23/06; American Sociological Review, 6/06]

QUOTE: "For most of the 20th century, Americans were becoming more connected with family and friends. ... Those trend lines turn sharply in the middle '60s and have gone the other direction ever since." —Robert D. Putnam, professor of public policy at Harvard and the author of Bowling Alone, who identifies television as the likely culprit for those societal trends. Just 5% of American households owned a TV in 1950. By 1960, television ownership was almost universal (95%). [washingtonpost.com, 6/23/06]

How much television will the average American watch this year? According to the just-published Statistical Abstract of the United States, the answer is 1,555 hours, or 4.3 hours daily. When other media are added in (radio, Internet, video games, newspapers, magazines and books), daily media consumption hits a whopping 9.65 hours. Only one activity tops media use: breathing. [AP, 12/15/06]

QUOTE: "High School Musical is a kiddie uprising against Britney and Justin, the way Brit and J.T. were a kiddie uprising against Nirvana and Pearl Jam." —Rolling Stone contributor Rob Sheffield, on Disney's wildly successful TV musical for kids—the soundtrack to which was the most popular album in 2006 [Rolling Stone, 5/4/06; SoundScan]

The 2006 movie American Dreamz imagines a "country where more people vote for a pop idol than their next president." Sadly, research firm Pursuant found that 35% of people it surveyed believe voting for American Idol contestants constitutes a better use of time than voting in a presidential election. [nypost.com, 5/3/06]

QUOTE: "All too many people read novels or see films and think they're experiencing reality. ... According to the Barna Group, 24% of those who read The Da Vinci Code said it 'aided their spiritual growth and understanding.' In other words, one in four of its readers believe the book's thesis (as opposed to its story line) is true." —columnist Don Feder, referring to how Dan Brown's controversial book has influenced some readers [grasstopsusa.com, 5/16/06]

QUOTE: "You can't tell whether a film like Brokeback Mountain or Transamerica is changing minds today. You'll see the results in five or 10 years. Art works on you in subtle and subterranean ways." —Craig Detweiler, head of Fuller Theological Seminary's film studies department [washingtonpost.com, 3/5/06]

In June 2006, the Journal of Adolescent Health reported that teens who absorbed sexually explicit entertainment the most frequently were up to 2.2 times more likely to have had sexual intercourse by ages 14 to 16 than those who had been exposed the least. [medialifemagazine.com, 3/22/06; Journal of Adolescent Health, 3/06; Reuters, 4/3/06]

According to researchers at the RAND Corporation, 12- to 17-year-olds who frequently listen to music with sexually degrading lyrics are almost twice as likely to engage in sexual activities within the following two years than their peers who rarely listen to such songs or who completely refrain. [AP, 8/7/06; webmd.com, 8/8/06]

A study by the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation has discovered a connection between listening to rap music and drinking alcohol, taking drugs and behaving aggressively. Said Dr. Meng-Jinn Chen, "The survey found that young people who listen to hip-hop use alcohol and drugs and engage in violent behavior, so this raises serious questions as to whether or not rap and hip-hop should be used to market alcoholic beverages. Our findings suggest there is a link between rap and violence." [mtv.com, 4/18/06]

QUOTE: "[Pornography] changes [teens'] perception of what is mainstream sexual behavior. They see a lot of things that they then expect to see echoed in their world. When I first started [editing teen magazines] in the early '90s, I received letters asking how sex works—mechanical questions. Now those questions are more, 'Should I shave off all my [pubic] hair?' When you see a bunch of girls asking a question like that, you have to assume that they're getting that image from somewhere—or their boyfriends are, and are communicating to them that that's their expectation." —Sabrina Weill, former Seventeen magazine editor in chief and author of The Real Truth About Teens and Sex [salon.com, 6/20/06]

The latest Youth Risk Behavior survey from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention states that a smaller percentage of high school students reported having sexual intercourse in 2005 than students who took the same survey in 1991 (46.8% vs. 54.1%, respectively). Today's teens are also less likely to have had sex with multiple partners than their 1991 counterparts (14.3% vs. 18.7%, respectively), with "multiple partners" being defined as sex with four or more different people during the person's lifetime. Condom usage among sexually active teens has increased in the last 15 years, rising from 46.2% to 62.8%. [Reuters, 8/11/06]

QUOTE: "It's definitely a good, well-worn, tried-and-true route to hooking up with a guy that you want. It's not giving him a lap dance and stripping on a pole for him, but it's showing him that you can be open, and if that's what he likes, that's what you'll do. Which makes him think you're better to sleep with than the 100 other girls in the room with you." —20-year-old college student Julie, describing the new "heteroflexible" mentality at high school and college parties: girls making out with each other in order to attract male attention [salon.com, 6/20/06]

QUOTE: "I grew up in the era when they always printed the lyrics out on the album, so I want [our songs' words] to look good on paper. [But] you put of lot of today's hip-hop on paper [and] it's like, 'What am I feeding my kids?' Poison. I hate to say it. We all know it is, though." —Cee-Lo, one half of the popular "rock-soul" hybrid Gnarls Barkley [Spin, 11/06]

A Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse report indicates that 15- to 19-year-old Canadians who smoke are significantly more likely to use illegal drugs and abuse alcohol. Among these smoking teens, almost 98% consumed alcohol in the past year, while a whopping 91% smoked marijuana (compared to 75% and 29% for their nonsmoking peers, respectively). In addition, 31% of the smokers had used cocaine, heroin, amphetamines, ecstasy or hallucinogens over the past 12 months, as opposed to just 3.5% of nonsmoking teens. [cbc.ca, 12/6/06]

QUOTE: "You often hear that pot leads to harder drugs. But I think alcohol is what leads you to everything, because it takes away the fear. The worst drug experimentation I ever did was because I was drunk and didn't care." —Audioslave lead singer Chris Cornell [Spin, 9/06]

For the third year in a row, fewer teens are using illicit drugs, according to the 2005 National Survey on Drug Use and Health. Among 12- to 17-year-olds, 9.9% are currently involved in illicit drug use—a decrease of almost 2% since 2002. Teen marijuana use has also fallen, from 8.2% to 6.8%. [PRNewswire, 9/7/06; usatoday.com, 9/7/06]

On Sept. 13, 2006, 25-year-old Kimveer Gill went on a shooting rampage at Dawson College in Montreal, Quebec, killing one person and wounding 19 others before police shot and killed him. Initial reports identified several factors influencing Gill's tragic behavior. Posts on the Web site vampirefreaks.com reveal his fascination with 1999's Columbine killings. He wrote that he enjoyed the video game Super Columbine Massacre; 50-plus photos picture him holding a rifle and wearing a black trench coat and combat boots similar to those worn by Columbine assailants Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. Gill also quoted 18-year-old Devin Moore (the Grand Theft Auto fan who killed two police officers in 2003) saying, "Life is a video game, you've got to die sometime." And a report from CFRB Radio in Toronto indicated that Gill had "drunk whiskey and listened to Megadeth" before launching his deadly assault. [AP, 9/14/06; knac.com, 9/14/06]

A study published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology reports that as few as 20 minutes of violent video game play can desensitize players to other violence. The 257 college students who took part in the study were divided into groups that played violent and non-violent games, then had their emotional reactions measured when exposed to short, extremely violent film clips. Researchers found that those who played the violent games had "lowered physiological responses." Iowa State University researcher Nicholas Carnagey observed, "It appears that individuals who play violent video games get used to it. They eventually become physiologically numb to it." [biz.gamedaily.com, 8/22/06]

In a June 14, 2006, U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee hearing titled Violent and Explicit Video Games: Informing Parents and Protecting Children, elected officials expressed frustration over the Entertainment Software Ratings Board's game-review process. How does it work? The ESRB's staff of 35 part-time reviewers, most of whom are parents hired to work two to three hours every other week, rate the approximately 1,100 games released annually. But instead of actually playing the games, reviewers base their ratings on information supplied by the game manufacturer, combined with 15 minutes to an hour watching a video of gameplay. "The ESRB's inability to play [each] game undermines their ability to independently rate the games, undermining the public's confidence in the ratings," said expert witness Kimberly Thompson, associate professor at the Harvard School of Public Health. [businessweek.com, 6/15/06]