Measuring Youth Media Exposure: A Multimodal Method for Investigating the Influence of Media on Digital Natives

Measuring Youth Media Exposure (MYME) methodology was developed in response to a need for more sensitive, comprehensive, and reliable measures of media use and exposure in a rapidly evolving and increasingly complex mobile digital environment. MYME combines multiple measurement modes to locate its findings in relation to historical trends and superimposes those components to complement, cross-validate, and provide strengths where other components have limitations. Self-collected as the individual moves through media-saturated environments, MYME combines established, validated media use measures, Recall Estimation and Time-Use Diaries, with Ecological Momentary Assessment in two forms, Questionnaire (Q-EMA) and Video (V-EMA). Triggered at random intervals during study participants’ waking hours, Ecological Momentary Assessment captures in detail complex behaviors, including multitasking and background exposure, simultaneously with media content, contexts of its use, and individuals’ responses, attention, and affective states. MYME measurement modes are focused, but open-ended so that they can be used to measure similar media uses and exposures as technology evolves over time. This allows MYME to be applied to prospective longitudinal studies of the temporal relations between media exposure, human development, and the physical, mental, and social health of children and adolescents, positioning MYME to test theorized contributions of media use to a wide variety of health and developmental outcomes. The pilot study reported here followed a cohort of 126 13- to 15-year-olds in three annual waves, measuring their media use and exposure, health status, and health-related behaviors. When implemented in future studies, MYME will be consolidated into a smartphone app which signals participants and collects and uploads time-linked data to a secure cloud-based data shell, where it can be accessed in a continuous manner and analyzed for specific research questions within and across participants.