Reading and Viewing.
“Young people’s leisure activities have changed in many ways from the past.”
Comment on this statement.In your response,you must support your views by referring to Texts 4 and 5 as well as your own experiences and observations.
Text 4
Leisure Pursuits of Today's Young Man; Forsaking TV for Online Games and Wanton Web Sites
By JOHN SCHWARTZ
Published: March 29, 2004
Note to the television networks: Pete Brandel is not missing. He's right here, but like a lot of other 20-something men he's just not watching as much TV.
Mr. Brandel, a 24-year-old real estate agent in Chicago, says that these days he looks to the Internet for news and entertainment. Television, he says, is bogged down by commercials and teasers that waste his time.
''I'll go to the Comedy Central Web site and download David Chappelle clips rather than wait to see them on TV,'' he said.
The television industry was shaken last October when the ratings from Nielsen Media Research showed that a huge part of a highly prized slice of the American population was watching less television. As the fall TV season began, viewership among men from 18 to 34 fell 12 percent compared with the year before, Nielsen reported. And for the youngest group of adult men, those 18 to 24, the decline was a steeper 20 percent.
In a world where fortunes are made and lost over the evanescent jitterings of fractions of audience share, the Nielsen announcement was the equivalent of a nuclear strike, a smallpox outbreak and a bad hair day all rolled into one.
But those who track the uses of technology say that the underlying shift in viewership made perfect sense. The so-called missing men might be more aptly called the missing guys, and they are doing what guys do: playing games, obsessing over sports and girls, and hanging out with buddies -- often online.
And the evidence is accumulating that the behavior of guys like Mr. Brandel is changing faster than once thought. The rapid expansion of high-speed Internet access lets the computer become the video jukebox that Mr. Brandel uses to watch comedy clips. The seemingly inexhaustible appetite for computer games, DVD players, music and video file-sharing -- and, yes, online pornography -- all contribute to the trend, these experts say. While no one activity is enough to account for the drop that Nielsen reported, all of them together create a vast cloud of diversion that has drawn men inexorably away from television.
A spokesman for Nielsen Media Research cautioned against reading too profound a societal shift into the ratings slide. Jack Loftus, the vice president for communications, took a gentle view of the ratings data, saying that the total loss of average viewership, spread out across the entire population of men 18 to 34, translated to a reduction of ''about four-and-a-half minutes'' a person each night, which he characterized as ''a bathroom break.'' The amount of viewing time lost, he said, has not narrowed since October.
That is understandable, experts say, given that nearly 75 percent of males 18 to 34 have Internet access, according to the latest figures from comScore Media Metrix, making them the most wired segment of the population. By comparison, 57 percent of men from 35 to 44 are online, comScore found in research for the Online Publishers Association, which is releasing the results today.
Between the allure of high-speed Internet services, computer games and other activities, ''you begin to have the ability to get entertained and distracted in a million ways, and not just television,'' said Rishad Tobaccowala, an executive with the Starcom MediaVest Group, a company that advises advertisers on where to put their money.
Incompatible survey methods make it impossible to say that a rise in one kind of activity corresponds precisely to a drop in another. But study after study show that those in the age range of the ''missing guys'' are devoting much more of their time and attention to interactions that take them away from passive activities like watching sit-coms and even popular reality TV shows like ''The Apprentice'' and ''American Idol.''
David F. Poltrack, executive vice president for research at CBS, says that the trend of young men watching somewhat less television is clear, but that the Nielsen numbers still do not add up. The effect ''should have been seen gradually over time,'' he said, not ''all of a sudden.''
Changes in Nielsen methodology, he said, are responsible for ''roughly half of that drop.'' He also predicted that television viewing would stabilize since young men were mavens of multitasking and tended to keep the television set on while using the computer, and that it could head upward again with new episodes of shows like ''The Sopranos,'' which attract a male audience.
When they are online, young men gravitate toward places frequented by other young men. Everyone goes to the most popular sites, like Google and Yahoo, but there are realms where the guy demographic is more heavily represented. They are 36 percent more likely to spend time at Web sites devoted to computer games than the general Internet population, and nearly 50 percent more likely to visit sports sites.
The missing men ''represent the most active Internet users by far, viewing more pages and spending more time online than any other age group,'' said Michael Zimbalist, president of the Online Publishers Association. ''There is no doubt that the Web has become the dominant medium in their lives.''
Other distractions abound. Men in that age group are also gadget fans, with nearly 48 percent more owning video game consoles than the rest of Internet users and nearly 17 percent owning digital music players like the Apple iPod.
ComScore also collects data on Internet pornography-viewing habits, although that was not part of the online publishers' report. According to the company, more than 70 percent of men from 18 to 34 visit a pornographic site in a typical month, and those men make up 25 percent of the visitors to such sites. They are 39 percent more likely than the rest of the Internet population to visit the sites, said Graham Mudd, an analyst for comScore.
''It's a high number,'' Mr. Mudd said, ''but it won't shock anyone who's worked in the industry.''
Text 5
Hot in Pursuit
“Young people’s leisure activities have changed in many ways from the past.”
Comment on this statement.In your response,you must support your views by referring to Texts 4 and 5 as well as your own experiences and observations.
Text 4
Leisure Pursuits of Today's Young Man; Forsaking TV for Online Games and Wanton Web Sites
By JOHN SCHWARTZ
Published: March 29, 2004
Note to the television networks: Pete Brandel is not missing. He's right here, but like a lot of other 20-something men he's just not watching as much TV.
Mr. Brandel, a 24-year-old real estate agent in Chicago, says that these days he looks to the Internet for news and entertainment. Television, he says, is bogged down by commercials and teasers that waste his time.
''I'll go to the Comedy Central Web site and download David Chappelle clips rather than wait to see them on TV,'' he said.
The television industry was shaken last October when the ratings from Nielsen Media Research showed that a huge part of a highly prized slice of the American population was watching less television. As the fall TV season began, viewership among men from 18 to 34 fell 12 percent compared with the year before, Nielsen reported. And for the youngest group of adult men, those 18 to 24, the decline was a steeper 20 percent.
In a world where fortunes are made and lost over the evanescent jitterings of fractions of audience share, the Nielsen announcement was the equivalent of a nuclear strike, a smallpox outbreak and a bad hair day all rolled into one.
But those who track the uses of technology say that the underlying shift in viewership made perfect sense. The so-called missing men might be more aptly called the missing guys, and they are doing what guys do: playing games, obsessing over sports and girls, and hanging out with buddies -- often online.
And the evidence is accumulating that the behavior of guys like Mr. Brandel is changing faster than once thought. The rapid expansion of high-speed Internet access lets the computer become the video jukebox that Mr. Brandel uses to watch comedy clips. The seemingly inexhaustible appetite for computer games, DVD players, music and video file-sharing -- and, yes, online pornography -- all contribute to the trend, these experts say. While no one activity is enough to account for the drop that Nielsen reported, all of them together create a vast cloud of diversion that has drawn men inexorably away from television.
A spokesman for Nielsen Media Research cautioned against reading too profound a societal shift into the ratings slide. Jack Loftus, the vice president for communications, took a gentle view of the ratings data, saying that the total loss of average viewership, spread out across the entire population of men 18 to 34, translated to a reduction of ''about four-and-a-half minutes'' a person each night, which he characterized as ''a bathroom break.'' The amount of viewing time lost, he said, has not narrowed since October.
That is understandable, experts say, given that nearly 75 percent of males 18 to 34 have Internet access, according to the latest figures from comScore Media Metrix, making them the most wired segment of the population. By comparison, 57 percent of men from 35 to 44 are online, comScore found in research for the Online Publishers Association, which is releasing the results today.
Between the allure of high-speed Internet services, computer games and other activities, ''you begin to have the ability to get entertained and distracted in a million ways, and not just television,'' said Rishad Tobaccowala, an executive with the Starcom MediaVest Group, a company that advises advertisers on where to put their money.
Incompatible survey methods make it impossible to say that a rise in one kind of activity corresponds precisely to a drop in another. But study after study show that those in the age range of the ''missing guys'' are devoting much more of their time and attention to interactions that take them away from passive activities like watching sit-coms and even popular reality TV shows like ''The Apprentice'' and ''American Idol.''
David F. Poltrack, executive vice president for research at CBS, says that the trend of young men watching somewhat less television is clear, but that the Nielsen numbers still do not add up. The effect ''should have been seen gradually over time,'' he said, not ''all of a sudden.''
Changes in Nielsen methodology, he said, are responsible for ''roughly half of that drop.'' He also predicted that television viewing would stabilize since young men were mavens of multitasking and tended to keep the television set on while using the computer, and that it could head upward again with new episodes of shows like ''The Sopranos,'' which attract a male audience.
When they are online, young men gravitate toward places frequented by other young men. Everyone goes to the most popular sites, like Google and Yahoo, but there are realms where the guy demographic is more heavily represented. They are 36 percent more likely to spend time at Web sites devoted to computer games than the general Internet population, and nearly 50 percent more likely to visit sports sites.
The missing men ''represent the most active Internet users by far, viewing more pages and spending more time online than any other age group,'' said Michael Zimbalist, president of the Online Publishers Association. ''There is no doubt that the Web has become the dominant medium in their lives.''
Other distractions abound. Men in that age group are also gadget fans, with nearly 48 percent more owning video game consoles than the rest of Internet users and nearly 17 percent owning digital music players like the Apple iPod.
ComScore also collects data on Internet pornography-viewing habits, although that was not part of the online publishers' report. According to the company, more than 70 percent of men from 18 to 34 visit a pornographic site in a typical month, and those men make up 25 percent of the visitors to such sites. They are 39 percent more likely than the rest of the Internet population to visit the sites, said Graham Mudd, an analyst for comScore.
''It's a high number,'' Mr. Mudd said, ''but it won't shock anyone who's worked in the industry.''
Text 5
Hot in Pursuit
What is the message in this picture about the entertainment
of youths?
of youths?
Sample synthesis
Introduction -2 /3 general statements stating your main opinion on the issue.
Body paragraph –Comments /analyses/critique/explain with support by referring to quotations from texts 4 and 5.
Conclusion-1/2 sentences to summarize main opinion.
Good answers are well structured,distilling the essence of the two texts equally as well as clearly expressing an opinion.Reference has to be made to the central ideas of the two texts.The synthesis should provide substantial evidence and explanation.Quotations from texts are integrated using appropriate conventions.Answer shows clear understanding of the main ideas of the texts.
Underline and highlight the sentences,phrases that you would like to make references to.
The activities carried out by young people during leisure time has changed significantly over the years.This is evident especially with the advancement in technology as well as the differences between past and present expectations of society.
Youths in the past spent time on physical activities such as swimming and playing sports.Nowadays,however youths spend their time chatting with friends online as stated in Text 4 by John Schwartz “ they are doing what guys do: playing games, obsessing over sports and girls, and hanging out with buddies -- often online.” Social networking sites like Friendster and Facebook have diverted youths from the traditional networks of socializing such as at football fields or malls to a cheaper mode of interaction and entertainment.Whereas in the 1960s and 70s,the favoured leisure pursuit of youths was listening to the radio and watching television
which as mentioned in Text 4 are “passive activities”,the present generation prefer a more interactive medium of entertainment with 3 dimensional graphics and real time simultaneous connectivity.This increase in dependency on technologically sound gadgets has resulted in a dramatic decrease in participation in physical activity and a rising incidence of obesity in youths.
Another disadvantage of youths being lured away from the popular past time of watching television is there is less and less social interaction between family members.
Youths in the past used to spend time watching their favourite tv shows or soap operas with their family in the living room and this lead to strengthening the bonds between family members as they could chit chat and share their opinions about the tv shows but with the shift to the use of the internet ,youths are increasingly alienated from pursuing common activities with their family members.This breakdown in communication between family members is portrayed in Text 5 entitled “Hot in Pursuit”which depicts two siblings totally engrossed in playing video games on the playstation consoles.The aim of defeating the opponent in a game may possibly increase hostility between siblings and intensify sibling rivalry as such games promote competitiveness and aggression rather than co-operation.
The writer in Text 4 is exaggerating the powerful influence of the Internet as he fears that it may overtake watching television as the preferred leisure activity of youths.He claimed in text 4 that “Nielsen Media Research showed that a huge part of a highly prized slice of the American population was watching less television”
He backs up his claim by quoting research statistics which stated that “youngest group of adult men, those 18 to 24, the decline was a steeper 20 percent. “
Besides he speculated that the reason for the fall in the popularity of television is due to the frequent interruptions of commercials,that waste time.However it can be argued that it’s a misconception as there are also constant distractions of advertisements put up by Adware over the internet which is more irritating especially when the site is hijacked by unwanted commercials promoting everything under the sun from creams to hotels.
The reliability of the statistics collected by Nielsen media research is to be doubted as the tone of the writer of Text 4 uses a lot of hyperbole to debunk the validity of the figures as seen in the lines “where fortunes are made and lost over the evanescent jitterings of fractions of audience share, the Nielsen announcement was the equivalent of a nuclear strike, a smallpox outbreak and a bad hair day”.
Today with the open communication system of the Internet,youths are able to access pornographic sites.As mentioned in Text 4, “more than 70 percent of men from 18 to 34 visit a pornographic site in a typical month”.While in the past,parents were more aware of what their children did and had better supervision of them,today’s parents are anxious about the threats posed by the internet and mobile phone .Generally parents are unaware of their children’s social life and how they spend their free time.
Overall,the way today’s young people spend their free time is poles apart from the youths of yesterday did.However,care should be taken to realize that it’s not necessarily better today.
