Young women’s readership

Katherine Page, technical consultant for the National Readership Survey, says for the majority of young women the print ‘magazine experience’ is still a relevant one, regardless of how else they consume media…

When a magazine such as Sugar closes it is an understandable reaction to see its demise as evidence that the young have stopped reading magazines in print. This is not the case, however. National Readership Survey (NRS) data show that young women are still reading magazines, though their tastes are different from those of their predecessors.

There is no doubt that the media consumption habits of young women have changed considerably over the last decade, and, yes, teenage magazines are no longer in their heyday. But that doesn’t mean that the young are doing all their reading online and via mobiles.

A look at the NRS to find out what young women are reading in print is instructive. The NRS doesn’t include very young teenagers, but surveys those aged 15 or over. NRS data show that back in the year 2000 the magazines 15-24 year old women were particularly likely to read (relative to women as a whole) included teen titles such as Just 17, 19, B magazine, Bliss, Looks and Sugar.

Fast forward a decade to 2010 and the NRS ‘top ten’ for the latest generation of young women looks very different. Only two titles feature in the top ten for both 2000 and 2010, namely More! and Company.  The new entrants include Look, Glamour, Reveal, Love It!, Heat, Star, New! and Closer, most of which have been launched in the past ten years. Together they enjoy a gross readership of almost four million among 15-24 year old women, according to the latest release of NRS data. This list of titles points to the real story of what has happened to young women’s readership.

Readership of monthly magazines has decreased overall among this demographic in the last ten years. Even then, there are some notable exceptions, such as the success of Glamour and the fact that Vogue has increased its 15-24 year-old readership by 50% since 2000.

However, across the same period the gross number of readership claims young women make for weekly magazines has almost doubled. It really is a case of swings and roundabouts, as the loss of readership for women’s monthlies is more or less exactly compensated by the increase in gross average issue readership claims for the weeklies. And that’s before one takes into account the fact that weeklies appear four times more often than monthlies.

Clearly the development of the celebrity magazine market in the last ten years has been a huge factor, despite the fact that this type of content is very freely available from other sources. It is women in the 15-24 age bracket who have driven the success of the titles launched in that period.

It is not the case that young women read less than their older counterparts – overall 15-24 year old women claim to be average issue readers of seven print titles, including newspapers, exactly the same as women aged 25+.

Furthermore, it is those 15-24 year olds who spend most time on their mobile phones who are particularly likely to be above average readers of print, especially weekly women’s magazines.

For the majority of young women the print ‘magazine experience’ is still a relevant one, regardless of how else they consume media. What has changed is the content that they want to read, and the magazines that provide it.