Beyond the Extremes : The " Pace of Life " and Media Use

In this paper we ask how socio-demographic factors like gender, education, family-type and age, affect the "Pace of Life" in the case of secondary media use. We assume that "harriedness" which in modern life is mostly connected with high social status is reflected by simultaneous media use as a strategy of effective time use. In our study we use German time-use data which were collected by the Federal Statistical Office in Germany in 2001 and 2002. Concentrating on full-time and parttime working individuals we found strong evidence for the hypotheses that men and women as well as different educational groups differ significantly in their share of secondary media use. Women as well as high-educated spend a greater share of secondary media use than men or loweducated individuals do, which can be seen as proof for a greater "harriedness" of women and high-educated in our society. **Draft version; Please do not quote without permission.