The Swedish Media Panel is a research program about children and young persons and their use of mass media. The aim of the ten-year (1975-1985) project is to explain how media habits originate, how they change as children grow older, what factors on the part of children themselves and in their surroundings may be connected with a certain use of the media and, finally, what consequences this may have. The main emphasis of the program is on television, but the use of radio, film, music, books, and the daily and weekly press is also studied. Data collected thus far (1976, 1978, 1980, and 1984) from 1,750 school children have indicated the following: (1) it is becoming more common for Swedish children to start watching television when they are three years old, with viewing slowly increasing until it peaks at upwards of two hours a day between the ages of 10 and 12; (2) boys invariably spend more time in front of television then girls; (3) television is the dominant mass medium where younger children are concerned; (4) at age 15 or 16 children watch less television than at any other period of life, turning from television to music of various kinds; (5) students prefer to use video recorders to play back rented cassettes; (6) the more time parents spend watching television, the more time children spend doing the same; and (7) children who are heavy television consumers tend more than others to be regarded as disruptive. (HOD)