According to a group of the TV industry's leading researchers funded by the Nielsen Company, American adults spend, on average, 8 hours a day in front of all kinds of screens - TV, computer monitors, cell phones and other devices.

Some people may consider the number of hours to be excessive. But "people do not seem to be getting up and running away," said Jack Wakshlag, chief research officer at Turner Broadcasting, and a CRE committee member.

The survey that has been released on Thursday, is believed to be the largest, most ambitious and most detailed ethnographic study that has ever been conducted to measure how U.S adults are using media by the means of the major screens. The top finding of the study is that today, when individuals increasingly become sophisticated in modern technology, the TV screen still dominates their lives and continues to consume the greatest amount of viewing time. The data suggests that computer usage has replaced radio as the second most popular media activity.

For the study, observers from the Ball State University's Center for Media Design, followed 350 individuals for the period of 24 months and recorded their exposure to 4 categories of screens: traditional TV screen, computers, mobile phones and other screens such as store displays, movie screens and even GPS navigation system units. The participants have been followed from the time the woke up in the morning till they went to bed at night, and most of them were former members of the Nielsen television ratings panel. Each person was shadowed for 2 days. Overall, the researchers recorded 952 days of behavior. Young people under 18 were not included in the study.

The study discovered that the average amount of screen time for subjects in all age groups was amazingly similar, at more than 8.5 hours of media exposure a day, although the type of devices and duration used by the individuals throughout the day varied. The experts found that, surprisingly, people between the ages of 45 and 54, spent, on average, an extra 1 hour in front of the screens every day.

Among other interesting findings, it was revealed that young people do not appear the only ones who distribute their attention between multiple screens and devices. Individuals in their mid 20s and 30s were found to spend the most time watching DVD or VCR videos, those in their 40s and early 50s spent the most time surfing the Web and sending e-mails. People who were over 55 years of age were significantly less likely to be multitasking and preferred mostly live television.

The data shows that the younger audiences, those between 18 and 24 years of age, mostly college students and the ones who just started a new job, watched the smallest amount of live TV of any age group (3.5 hours per day), and spent the most time sending text messages (about half an hour a day), as well as watched the most online video (5.5 minutes a day).

People who owned a DVR for a long time, used it to watch TV much more often (15 minutes a day) compared to those who only purchased a DVR in a recent time. HDTV owners who just bought their first or second HDTV appeared to watch TV more often than people who did not own it. The experts also found that Americans over 45 spend more time fiddling with the screens on their GPS navigation systems than they spend on watching Internet video.

When the study participants were asked to recall their behaviors, "people underestimated the amount of time they spent with TV by a substantial amount," about 25 per cent on average, Mr. Wakshlag noted. At the same time, the same individuals were more likely to overestimate their exposure to other media.

Tags: Society

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