A survey commissioned by OFCOM showed that people spend more time using technology than sleeping. On average, people consume media for eight hours and 41 minutes whereas they spend eight hours and 21 minutes asleep. The growth of Smartphone use is a significant contributory factor, with 61% of adults owning them and using them for 81 minutes a day. This is dwarfed by the 16-24 year olds who spend more than three and a half hours a day on these devices. 77% of the 1 hour 24 minutes a day that this age group spends on social media is done on a smartphone.
It presumably also accounts for the bulk of the 261 minutes per day that this group spends communicating, with only 3% of time using a landline. TV viewing as a proportion of media consumption has remained fairly static at around 232 minutes, down slightly from 241 minutes. Again the comparison with the 16-24 year-olds is more striking, with only 148 minutes spent in from of a Television, down 21 minutes from 2010. TV viewing as a proportion of media consumption has remained fairly static at around 232 minutes, down slightly from 241 minutes. Again the comparison with the 16-24 year-olds is more striking, with only 148 minutes spent in from of a television, down 21 minutes from 2010. The importance of listening to the radio also varies according to age groups.
For the over 65s, it is significantly higher and constitutes 86% of their daily audio content. For most other age groups, it is around 67% of their input, but for the 16-24s it represents only 24%. Approximately a third of their time is spent listening to streamed audio and another third listening to their own digital content.
90% of people over the age of 55 favour the television for their news whereas 60% of 16-24 years prefer to access the news online. There is a similar disparity between these two groups in the use of the postal service, with the younger group favouring e-mail and only using the post if there is no alternative. For the very young, 6-11 year olds are more likely to use tablets with 60% claiming to use them every week.
The smartphone has increasing influence with the 12-15 year-olds, for them the second most popular device after the television in this age group. Most adults (99%) admitted to multi-tasking and using more than one media device at the same time, though the most popular combination remained voice calls whilst watching television. By so doing, adults squeeze over 11 hours of daily media usage into their 8 hours 41 minutes. The access to media that has been made possible by the prevalence of the Internet is not however restricted to extending leisure time. Improved communications mean that 46% of people access work related e-mails from home, 22% on a regular basis. For senior managers, the figure is significantly higher with 72% admitting to corresponding from home out of hours.
We therefore spend more time on home media devices than we do at work and just about manage to fit in enough time to sleep. Having the smartphone next to the bed is sometimes too much of a temptation that one in ten people admit to sending work related e-mails from bed and 30% of staff admit to responding to communications whilst on holiday. People cite reasons of not wanting to miss anything or having flexibility in their work, but we do need to switch off and perhaps we should do just that. Getting away from it all with no Internet or mobile signal may now be the only way to truly relax, instead of absorbing the next instalment from social media or responding to a communication from work.
But how many of us could survive? One in five people surveyed stated that smartphones would be the device they would miss most if they were no longer available. Nowadays, particularly for the younger generation, the availability of wi-fi is as much of a priority as a swimming pool for booking a vacation. Perhaps the days of a holiday get-away are numbered.
