Americans consume media in a major way, study finds
Americans consume an enormous amount of media each day that Americans will consume media for more than 1.7 trillion hours, an average of approximately 15.5 hours per person per day. The amount of media delivered will exceed 8.75 zettabytes annually or 74 gigabytes — 9 DVDs worth — of data sent to the average consumer on an average day.
- Mobile messaging hours, which in 2012 accounted for approximately 9.
Looking across different sources of media — from traditional media (TV, radio, voice calls) to new digital sources (tablets, mobile gaming devices, smartphones, mobile video) — the report made a surprising discovery.
“Despite the popular belief that the ubiquitous computer and smartphone dominate modern media life, traditional media, including TV, radio and voice calls, still account for two-thirds of total U.S. household media time,” Short concluded. “Of course the picture is a changing one as digital platforms continue to grow, but they are still only a third of total annual media time.”
New digital sources, however, are having major effects on most forms of media consumption. If we change our focus from the time people spend viewing media to the number of bytes presented, over half of all bytes are now received by computers, with mobile computers the most rapidly growing segment.
The report also included data on Americans’ use of media dating back to the 1960s. Over those decades, the supply of digital media measured in bytes has been growing at compounded rates ranging between 6 and 30 percent each year. Media consumption, on the other hand — what we actually pay attention to — has been growing at compounded rates ranging between 3 percent and 5 percent each year.
The “How Much Media?” research program was sponsored by an industry consortium including Alcatel-Lucent, AT&T, Cisco Systems, Hewlett-Packard, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Seagate Technology and Verizon Wireless. Lucy Hood, head of CTM and president and chief operations officer of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, and Josette Bonte, CTM chief strategy officer and director of research, contributed industry guidance and program support.
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