The aim of the project is to analyse whether the media during the last 15 years have contributed to increased consumerism and individualisation and to the privatisation and globalisation of young people's lives. Quantitative, longitudinal data will be analysed in order to elucidate this empirically. The focus is on the home and private life in relation to public life, on the individual contra social identity, on the role as a citizen or as a consumer and on local or global anchorage.
Some central questions are whether the balance between leisure time spent in private or in public areas has changed or whether engagement in sports activities, cultural activities or other leisure activities outside home has decreased over time. Is a displacement from active participation to passive consumption discernible; from being a participant to being a recipient? The importance of individual identity and life style is emphasised at the expense of social identity. The media world has also become globalised, which has consequences for the ways in which children and young people perceive themselves, their lives and their place in the world.

Ethnographical research in this area is theoretically solid, but there is a lack of empirical evidence. It is essential to have empirical analyses that can confirm or disprove theories with quantitative data, comparable over groups as well as over contexts. It is also essential to support and modulate earlier research. Such data are available in the database of the longitudinal research programme Media Panel, which comprises empirical data from 1975 to 2002.