Date: 2010-08-19 Category: News
Ofcom report highlights ’multi-tasking media users’
The average Briton spends almost half of their waking life using media and communications, data suggests. BBC News has reported that statistics from regulator Ofcom suggest people in the UK spend seven hours a day watching TV, surfing the net and using their mobile phones.
However, the average person actually squeezes in the equivalent of nearly nine hours of media and communications by multi-tasking on several devices.
The statistics come from industry sources and a survey of 1,138 adults. The report also suggests that traditional media is holding its own. Television still dominates people’s media habits, with the average person spending around 3.8 hours watching television every day, it says.
"For the first time we have mapped the totality of communications use over one day," said Peter Philips of Ofcom.
The annual Communications Market Report says that the average person spends around 15 hours 45 minutes every day awake. Of this time, it says, the average person spends seven hours and five minutes "engaging in media and communications activities".
However, it found that most people are able to cram in even more by multi-tasking. For example, the report found that adults aged between 16 and 24 appeared to consume the least, spending just six hours and 35 minutes a day on the phone, laptop, radio or television.
But by multitasking - effectively using two or more devices at once - the survey found that young adults were able to squeeze the equivalent of nine hours 32 minutes worth of consumption into that time.
"They are taking up more and more communications activities but fitting them into the same amount of time," said James Thickett, director of market research and market intelligence at Ofcom.
The news about our multi-tasking media lives has been met with a mixture of shock, indifference - and just a hint of moral panic Rory Cellan-Jones BBC’s technology correspondent commented.
He said this was largely due to the rise in the mobile internet and the use of smartphones. "It has untethered people from being in one particular place."
For the full story visit www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-11012356
