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A study released by eMarketer reveals that people in the U.S. currently spend more than half their day consuming media – 12 hours, one minute spent with major media every day.
In the study, “US Time Spent with Media,” eMarketer measured every minute of daily media consumption across platforms. Simultaneous usage of two or more media devices – such as watching television while utilizing a smartphone – counted individually toward the total. Thus, total media consumption time continued to grow, even as the number of minutes in a day remained the same.
“Multitasking via mobile is primarily responsible for the overall increase in time spent with media. Consumers are spending more of their time on mobile devices conducting attention-heavy activities like video viewing and mobile gaming, but also with less visual activities like audio listening that enable continuous media intake,” stated eMarketer in a release accompanying the study.
Television remains the most-used means of consuming media for U.S. adults, with 3 hours, 58 minutes of use each day. And with the rise of mobile, even with multitasking, that figure is down seven minutes from 2016, and below their forecast for this year at 4 hours, 19 minutes.