Increase in Consumption of Media by Americans
The entertainment industry is booming, and companies are putting whatever they can on entertainment. Almost every major media platform has been doubling their efforts in reaching media content to viewers. And they have a good reason for doing so. According to Nielsen’s report, U.S adults spend on average almost 6 hours per day on video.
These 6 hours are spent not just in front of cable television, but includes time spent watching both live or pre-recorded TV, videos on an app or mobile website and also watching a video over a TV connected device. Consider Netflix, for example. The streaming service is available practically everywhere. On the phone, the web and also on smart TV’s.
Shocking Statistics
In total, Americans spend approximately 11 hours listening, watching or reading media. And 6 hours is a huge chunk of it. Although there has been a decrease in the viewing of cable television, the overall time spent in watching media has far from decreasing. In fact, the viewing has increased over 11 minutes from the previous quarter.
Most of the consumption for adults is via either the radio or the TV. Live TV also is taking up a huge piece of the pie by an average of 4 hours and 46 minutes per day. That also explains the recent spike in live shows. These shows vary across genres including live interviews and comedy shows.
Research also shows an increase in streaming TV, and that is evident with the increase of time spent on TV-connected devices like Roku, Chromecast, Amazon Fire TV, Apple TV and various other services or devices. These services are preferred by younger people as they embrace digital platforms then cable TV, and they tend to side to internet-connected devices. And frankly, that is not a bit surprising.
Huge Increase
And by an increase in usage, we don’t mean a small jump but a huge one. People aged from 18-34 are reported to have spent 43 percent of the time on digital platforms and smartphones take almost a third of that time. The amount of time younger ones spend on media via TV-connected usage is double that of total adults, and seven times as much as elderly ones. In plain ones, the younger ones of this generation watch or consume media for nearly half an hour more than the average adult.
And if this is the statistics about media consumption, then what about social networking? Adults tend to spend an average of 45 minutes on social media, and not surprisingly, the majority of that time is on smartphones. It’s clear. It’s not just youngsters that have their heads bent down towards their phones. This is a problem that we all are facing, young and old alike. Though the consistency among youngsters is higher, this is still a problem that needs to be addressed.
64 percent of adult smartphone users who tend to watch video content on social networking sites or apps do at least once a day, while younger ones are up top at a 72 percent. This report shows us that our usage is something that needs to be taken care of. We just can’t let something like this sideline us, because if the problem is not addressed to right now, there would be a bigger crisis that would need to be handled.
