Peer effects on youth screen media consumption in Catalonia (Spain)

Catalan adolescents’ media uses and leisure preferences related to new media and television

“…Third, media use and consumption is generally influenced by, and related to, home, family and daily routines, including leisure activities and, above all, the peer group (Escardibul et al 2013). For this reason, the specific reception situations of adolescents, as well as their spare time habits need to be taken into account in order to investigate their media usage.…”

Do Your School Mates Influence How Long You Game? Evidence from the U.S.

“…An important difference between television viewing and video gaming is the level of involvement and the type of activity: Unlike television watching, video games provide a place for social interaction both online and face-to-face, and the content of video games can be modified by interaction of player with the game and with other players. Only one recent study [ 29 ] focused on video gaming and found a statistically significant peer effect in console use time in a representative survey of secondary school students aged 14–16 in Catalonia (Spain) in 2008, with an additional hour increase in console gaming by nominated friends within the classroom leading to an increase in individual’s gaming by 5 minutes among boys but no effect among girls.…”

“…While some of the existing studies rely on more recent data, the data used were quite limited in coverage: Sirard et al [ 28 ], who studied peer effects in general screen time, only used data collected in the state of Minnesota; Escardíbul et al [ 29 ], who studied peer effects in video gaming time, used only data from Catalonia, an autonomous community of Spain. The results from these limited samples might not directly apply to other populations in light of a significant variability across human populations in terms of psychology, motivation, and behavior [ 30 ].…”

“…If these are the main driving forces behind the correlation in peers’ behavior, a policy aimed at changing video gaming habits will not have a ripple effect among individuals who were not directly affected by the policy. The previous analysis of peer effects [ 29 ] may suffer from the selection concerns; while they utilized the relevant peer group of nominated friends in the same classroom, estimates based on the peer group of nominated friends within the same classroom are likely suffer from peer selection [ 31 ] that might not be properly controlled for by the included observable covariates at the individual and classroom levels. Escardíbul et al [ 29 ] tried to address the reflection problem by using a convincing identification strategy—by utilizing characteristics of the respondents’ friends-of-friends who are not friends with the respondent—as instruments for peers’ video gaming.…”

“…The previous analysis of peer effects [ 29 ] may suffer from the selection concerns; while they utilized the relevant peer group of nominated friends in the same classroom, estimates based on the peer group of nominated friends within the same classroom are likely suffer from peer selection [ 31 ] that might not be properly controlled for by the included observable covariates at the individual and classroom levels. Escardíbul et al [ 29 ] tried to address the reflection problem by using a convincing identification strategy—by utilizing characteristics of the respondents’ friends-of-friends who are not friends with the respondent—as instruments for peers’ video gaming. However, the intransitivity property of the peer network, which requires that some of the students are not directly related as friends but only via others, is unlikely to hold if some students under-report their friendships.…”