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Youth Spend More Time on Web Than TV

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the choosing-one's-poison dept.

ChopsMIDI writes "According to a survey of 2,618 people, aged 13 to 24, teenagers and young adults spend more time on the Internet than watching television, indicating a shift in media consumption for a demographic prized by advertisers. On average, young people said they spent nearly 17 hours online each week, not including time used to read and send electronic mail, compared with almost 14 hours spent watching television and 12 hours listening to the radio."

5 of 285 comments (clear)

  1. Heh, what a surprise by vadim_t · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I don't even watch TV these days, with the ocassional exception for the Simpsons and maybe a movie or two. The internet is much better. It doesn't show you 30 minutes of ads per movie, content is just available there and not during a specific day and time, and the content is much more interesting.

    Here (Spain) it seems that the producers of some shows are brain damaged. A while ago I turned on the TV to see if there was anything, saw a bit of some "Putin's daughter" crap, and went back to my computer.

  2. Ok let's see... by 16977 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    That's about 2.5 hours of internet access per day, plus 2 hours of tv and 1.5 hours of listening to the radio. So either these kids are spending 6 hours a day (after school no less) sitting in front of various electronic babysitters or they've learned how to multi-task.

  3. things are changing by mozkill · · Score: 5, Insightful

    things are changing:

    1. first, the music industry loses its ability to control the marketing of new music to people because the people themselves have control of the distribution technology (i.e. Napster, Kazaa )

    2. then, the television industry loses its control of what people think because the internet allows people once again to control what they read, hear, and see.

    It sounds to me like the whole media industry is losing its control over people and we can thank technology for doing this for us! :-)

    --

    -- Betting on the survival of the media industry is a serious risk. I advise investing elsewhere.
  4. Re:good! by murdocj · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Anyway, every hour spent online is way better than any hour spent on TV. Being online keeps your brain working, I doubt TV does that very often.

    Well this is the conventional wisdom, and I used to believe it. But having played Everquest off and on for a while, I'd have to say that a decent TV program is at least as stimulating and thought provoking is sitting in place, and occasionally pressing a button or two. And this isn't just true of EQ, many games may be "interactive" but they aren't requiring too many brain cells to fire.

    Personally I put both sitting online and sitting in front of the tv in the same class. I'm glad that one displaces the other, but you'd still be better off getting up, getting outside, and moving around once in while.

  5. Positive effects for television by Chambers81 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    As much as I hate MTV and the crap that they force on the viewers they still have, I find that they are approaching this transition in a positive manner. There are several shows that are utilizing the multitasking potential of the internet with television, in order to receive feedback and make shows interactive. MTV2 does a show that requires viewers to log on and vote for the next video in realtime. This is the way to combine your programming with the power of the internet and not lose out. By making your TV programming customizable to some extent by the viewers, I would think they would be less likely to change channels or even turn the TV off altogether.