(RNN) – This article should take about five minutes to read. Statistically speaking, if you’re an American adult, that means you’ll spend another 11 hours and one minute interacting with media today.
A new report by Nielsen, the metrics and market research company best known for measuring TV ratings, says adults in the U.S. spend more than 11 hours per day “listening to, watching, reading or generally interacting with media.”
Media in this case means basically any visual or audio content, not strictly the news media. That can range from TV to smartphones to video games to the radio.
Nielsen broke the types of media down into nine categories, and outlined the average amount of time spent with each:
- Live TV: 4 hours 10 minutes
- Smartphone use (on app/web): 2 hours 22 minutes
- Radio: 1 hour 46 minutes
- Tablet use (on app/web): 47 minutes
- Computer use (on internet): 39 minutes
- Time-shifted TV (anything recorded): 36 minutes
- Internet-connected device (such as Apple TV or Google Chromecast): 26 minutes
- Game console: 14 minutes
- DVD/Blu-ray: 6 minutes
From our blog: 'Time Flies: U.S. Adults Now Spend Nearly Half a Day Interacting with Media' https://t.co/y4wYN7wZRE pic.twitter.com/CqJcrjq79L
— Nielsen (@Nielsen) July 31, 2018
Media consumption is rapidly increasing, according to Nielsen. Americans are spending 36 more minutes on average with media every day than they did even in the third quarter of last year, a 5.7 percent increase.
There hasn’t been much published research on the topic, but a 2013 Gallup poll said Americans were sleeping 6.8 hours per night. If that number remains roughly accurate, that means Americans spend about 65 percent of their 17.2 waking hours consuming media of some kind.
Nielsen noted that while time spent with TV and radio has remained relatively steady, “newer platforms that have emerged as a result of internet accessibility and growing connectedness of consumers are ultimately behind the growth of media usage.”
The agency reported that just between the fourth quarter of 2017 and first quarter of 2018, time spent with internet-connected devices that operate through a TV set, such as Apple TV or game consoles like Xbox, increased by more than 14 percent, to 40 minutes.
Not surprisingly, younger Americans are leading the way toward adoption of newer platforms. While older Americans (65-plus) still consume about three-quarters of their media from TV and radio, Americans aged 18-34 consume just 42 percent of their media through such legacy technology.
They interact with media through digital platforms or internet-connected TV devices 57 percent of the time (1 percent of time was unaccounted for).
Nielsen also notes that “with the race/ethnic landscape of the U.S. rapidly changing, multicultural consumers are driving the changes in the media landscape as well, with younger generations being more diverse.”
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