Universidad Camilo José Cela will lead ADJIM (Youth Digital Attention: Interactive Behaviours and Transformations in Multi-Screen Environments) over the next three years, a research project that will analyse how young people distribute their attention within an audiovisual ecosystem increasingly shaped by the simultaneous use of different devices.
Awarded funding under the 2025 Knowledge Generation Projects call, ADJIM will focus in particular on an increasingly common behaviour: using a mobile phone while simultaneously watching a film, series or other audiovisual content on a main screen. The aim is to gain a more precise understanding of what happens to viewers’ attention when several screens are used at the same time, and to advance towards new ways of measuring it.
The project is led by Jorge Gallardo-Camacho, Professor of Audiovisual Communication at Universidad Camilo José Cela, and brings together an interdisciplinary team of ten researchers specialising in fields including audiovisual communication, sociology, psychology, neuromarketing, advertising and engineering.
One of the main questions the research will address is when young people look away from the main screen to focus on their mobile phone, how long these interruptions last and how they subsequently regain their attention on the content they were watching.
To analyse these behaviours, the team will work with young people aged 18 to 24 and use eye-tracking technology. This tool will make it possible to record participants’ gaze patterns, fixations and attention times while they consume content in a multi-screen environment.
The methodology will be complemented by focus groups and behavioural observation, with the aim of combining evidence obtained through technology with the perceptions and experiences of the participants themselves.
“We know how long a screen remains switched on or how many people play a particular piece of content, but that does not necessarily mean we know where their attention actually is. It is important to explore co-viewing in greater depth, and that is why we want to observe what happens when a young person is watching audiovisual content while also having their mobile phone within reach,” explains Jorge Gallardo-Camacho, principal investigator of ADJIM.
The research therefore starts from the distinction between exposure and effective attention. The fact that content is being played, or that a person remains in front of a screen, does not necessarily mean that their attention is focused on it, particularly in a context in which the mobile phone is constantly competing for the user’s gaze.
ADJIM aims to generate new evidence on how these multi-screen consumption habits are transforming young people’s relationship with audiovisual content. Based on the results obtained over the three-year research period, the project also aims to advance the development of new metrics capable of measuring viewers’ actual attention more accurately.
