Americans Spend More Than Eight Hours A Day Consuming Media

television-remote

Americans spend a lot of time consuming media:

On average, people spend more than 490 minutes of their day with some sort of media, according to a new report by ZenithOptimedia. Television remains dominant, accounting for three hours of daily consumption—an hour more than the internet, in second place. (The report measures media consumed in its traditional form—for example, broadcasts on television sets and newspapers in print. Watching videos on the web or reading a newspaper’s website counts as internet consumption.)

By 2017, we will find even more time in the day to take in media—half of our waking life is apparently not enough—with global average consumption set to rise to 506 minutes, according to ZenithOptimedia.

This chart shows how media consumption has changed over the past five years: (“Outdoor” outdoor media such as billboards, televisions in public spaces, and the like)

Media Chart One

And this chart does a much better job of showing how media consumption has become much more centered on the online world, whole print media continues to die:

Media Chart Two

When it comes to media consumption, though, we North Americans are mere pikers compared to people in other parts of the world:

Media Chart Three

One imagine that the numbers for the Asia-Pacific region will rise as more and more people in China and India gain access to the online world.

FILED UNDER: Economics and Business, Media, , , ,
Doug Mataconis
About Doug Mataconis
Doug Mataconis held a B.A. in Political Science from Rutgers University and J.D. from George Mason University School of Law. He joined the staff of OTB in May 2010 and contributed a staggering 16,483 posts before his retirement in January 2020. He passed far too young in July 2021.

Comments

  1. OzarkHillbilly says:

    I need to get a life.

  2. Tyrell says:

    Consider the average teen, and many adults, spend probably 18-20 hours. Teens take their phones to bed to text half the night. Advice for parents: when it is bedtime for your children, take their cell phones.
    Does that figure include time spent at work or school on computers and watching videos ?
    It is amazing the prices that some of the older electronics are now getting. Someone retrieved one of the first Apple pc’s out of a dumpster: worth thousands. I have a very old Atari and several dozen games stored out in the garage. We have the Nintendo DS, DSI, and DS 3D with lots of games, and a Wii with about fifty games. Those will be passed on with our estate. I have, somewhere, a Kodak movie projector and camera that my father got in the fifties. The local school system has a storage building loaded with surplus laptops and the old 16 mm film projectors. They often sell these at ridiculously low prices.
    If you have old electronics, hold onto them. If you see them at yard sales or thrift stores, get them.

  3. PJ says:

    @Tyrell:

    It is amazing the prices that some of the older electronics are now getting. Someone retrieved one of the first Apple pc’s out of a dumpster: worth thousands. I have a very old Atari and several dozen games stored out in the garage. We have the Nintendo DS, DSI, and DS 3D with lots of games, and a Wii with about fifty games. Those will be passed on with our estate.

    Nintendo DS, and all variants: 154.01 million sold
    Nintendo 3DS: 52.06 million sold
    Nintendo Wii: 101.52 million sold

    You can happily throw them away, they will all be worthless.

    Not even Nintendo’s “Color TV-Game”, its first console, that only sold a total of 3 million copies, gets you anything.

    There are some very rare game cartridges that are quite expensive, but I doubt that you have any of them, most likely, what you have is something that million others already have.

    There are less than 70 Apple-1 known to exist today, and only one tenth of them are in working condition. That, and what Apple is today, is what makes them so expensive.