Media Practice Model
Jeanne Rogge Steele
The Media Practice Model is a graphic representation that illustrates how adolescents use media in their everyday lives. First presented in 1995, it grew out of a collaborative student/faculty project that explored how teenagers used the mass media (television, radio, magazines, movies, and newspapers) when forging their sexual identities. Since then, it has proved to be a robust way to describe the role of media in the lives of teens not only within the context of teenage sexuality but also in general. Breaking with a tradition of studying media primarily from a quantitative research perspective, the model was based on a series of qualitative studies that focused on adolescents' room culture. In their rooms (most often their bedrooms), teenagers of the 1990s listened to music, watched television, read magazines, talked on the phone, and did homework. A privileged few had access to the Internet. Millennial teens engage in these same