Navigating Youth Media Landscapes: Challenges and Opportunities for Public Media

The tween and teen years are critical as youth explore and begin to form their identities. With By/With/For Youth: Inspiring Next Gen Public Media Audiences, the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame workshop and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting seek to more deeply understand the current media habits of tweens and teens in order to envision a future of public media that equips young people to participate and thrive in today’s complex world. How can public media reach young people when there are so many platforms and brands competing for their attention? Navigating Youth Media Landscapes: Challenges and Opportunities for Youth Media curates and distills some of the most critically important quantitative and qualitative work from highly respected organizations and individuals in this constantly evolving space in order to learn more about current tween and teen media practices and to identify opportunities for public media to reach this young audience. 

The authors dive into YouTube and influencer culture, the blurring lines between consuming and creating content, and how youth use media to accomplish specific goals, and identify key areas that warrant further investigation by youth media researchers and public media stakeholders alike. If public media is to succeed in winning over young audiences, producers will want to consider the entire range of the landscape of media that is created by, with, and for young people and to ensure that their voices are part of these conversations.