“The study found that young adults spend more time on the Web than with any other media source and are not likely to be partial to one medium, as older generations are. Teenagers surveyed spent an average of 16.7 hours online per week, excluding e-mail. The next most popular medium was television, which teens turned to 13.6 hours per week, followed by radio, which took up 12 hours of a typical teen’s week.” Lisa M. Bowman —Web Marketing Sells Like Teen Spirit (News.com)

The study was funded by Yahoo! and something called “Carat North America”. It’s being touted to gain publicity for Yahoo’s “Born to be Wired” conference, in which, according to News.com, “media experts will examine the media consumption habits and lifestyle of today’s youth.” Note the reference to “consumption,” which doesn’t really take into the account the paradigm shift that interests me — young people are not merely consuming web media, they are creating it, sharing it, critiquing it, and archiving it like never before. There’s obviously a sliding scale of derivative work (such as ripping and burning a custom CD made from professionally-produced music) and completely original work, but the Internet is already threatening the traditional hierarchy.

(Link via Ron’s Ramblings. Incidentally… with a cool name like “Ron Zeno,” why call your blog “Ron’s Ramblings?” Was “Zeno’s Paradox” taken?)