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Youth Spend More Time on Web Than TV
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."
Lets hope they are using interactive forms (like this comment form) and not just wathing flash movies or playing mmorpgs.
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.
I mean, look at all the services that the Internet can provide:
Chat, Shopping, Gaming, Education, Music, Movies AND TV (I mean, who hasn't downloaded a Simpsons episode or two off Kazaa?)
Add to that the fact that Reality TV (TM) is killing off all of the creativity in television; I want to see comedies, movies and interesting documentaries. I don't care if Joe Bloggs from London has won £10 000 for pretending to be a chicken in the streets.
For me, TV can be too much of a passive experience after a short while. If I'm gonna stare at a screen for hours, why not be fragging AND chatting to a few people in Day of Defeat?
Mother, do you think they'll like this sig?
amateurs! more like seventy hours a week!
"I would say that 99 per cent of what my father has written about his own life is false." - L. Ron Hubbard Jr.
Did they count the hours teenagers and young adults spend on the computer, while watching television? If the television and the computer are in the same room, it's not uncommon for them to do both.
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.
Will the future generations be more literate since they spend all of their time reading instead of watching TV? Maybe it will make it worse since 3v3ry7h1ng 15 5p3ll3d l1k3 7h15.
Sound waves should be free!
It's an easy choice: (1) easy access to free pr0n or (2) "reality TV".
For (1) substitute whatever interests you. News junkies, humor, multi-player gaming, music swapping, ad infinitum. It's available on demand 24x7. TV forces you to adhere to mostly least-common-denominator programming at the programmer's schedule, unless you fumble with a VCR, or you have a TIVO that your Dad hasn't monopolized. It's not surprising that the kids have gravitated to the Internet as the new entertainment medium, as have many adults.
The Internet is a vaster wasteland.
OK. Yes, it does matter.
I don't watch TV either. At least, very little. Most days I watch none.
I like getting news in real time on the Internet and from various sources. I feel much more informed than my in-laws, who religiously sit in front of Dan Rather every night and think that he some how makes them more informed than I.
I do read local newspapers for more local flavor, though.
For entertainment, let's just say that the Internet offers, um, more provative content...
I even listen to radio over the Internet. I think my lifestyle will eventually demand a Tablet PC or something. But, I'll wait until they beef them up a bit on battery life and applications.
That said, I'm not sure how long all of this free content will last. Given my choice of browser, I don't view any ads. How long can the "system" support this leeching of content?
The final aspect to my online life is the social one. Email and IM makes life much easier as opposed to the unconnected world.
So, from an information, entertainment, and social point of view, the content of the online world has finally reached critical mass for me. It may take another 5 years for this to make some drastic change in TV, newspaper, etc. But, I think we have finally passed the inflection point.
"If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid." - Epictetus
Certainly this inclination toward the web over TV is one reason that advertising will have to drastically change. As spam filters, and pop-up killers, and page-based context filters develop, it will get harder and harder to put the "sell" on younger people. (All people, for that matter.) I think the P2P vs. filtering evolutionary wars are a harbinger of things to come. Individuals do not like being manipulated by corporate imagery. My fear is that eventually a legal argument will be made that since an advertiser has paid for space on a page, it will be illegal for somebody to mess with that page, since the page is the property of some other corporation and not of the individual who views it.
Maybe as an analogy, you can imagine some hot-shot electronics guy building a special jammer that only jams beer commercials and leaves all other content in place. Clearly beer companies would hate it, and no doubt the FCC already says they control all transmitting of public content and not just the non-advertising stuff (cmp. the small power FM station fiascoes). Since this is the rule in Wavelength Land, I can see nothing to stop it becoming the rule in Web Land.
Moreover, if congress is willing to introduce bills to make P2P software illegal, I have little reason to think their $$$ masters will hold back on anything else. I think getting something like a super-Freenet up and running with (effectively) unbreakable crypto is the only hope of keeping us from some weird oligarcic socialism.
brinticus
P.S. I don't mind clones, its me being like everybody else I hate.
It's alarming that big companies like Forbes associate Internet time with TV, using the blanket statement, "media consumption". I don't know about you but as a member of several online forums and an occational website content producer myself, someone who uses the internet as a tool to look up information, I don't really feel like I am sitting here consuming a media product.
Now, don't mind as I once again don my tin-foil hat.
You see this language everywhere. We are all consumers. We consume things. That's our purpose. "They" produce product and push it out, and we consume. Is Forbes's language evidence that big media still doesn't "Get It" with respect to the power of creation the Internet provides to us lowly consumption robots? Does the author really believe that Internet use soley consists of consumption of products?
Or is it one of the many subtle ways large companies push the idea that we are just consuming pac-men, and that nothing we do is imporant unless it involves consuming someone's product.
I think the consistant use of the word "consumer" to describe PEOPLE is evidence that this is a widespread attempt by those in charge (large corporations) to make their world-views come true through the force of subtle language changes.
Ok, off with the tin-foil hat! Good day.
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.
In a time where kids are convinced that oral sex is not sex, email not being seem as online is no surprise. The Internet is what you see in IE, isn't it?
See naked people (hell even autopron posts on /.)
Centrally communicate (anyone from around the world can join the same chat room).
But let's get into to why when I was a teenager (soo long ago *cough* 3 years ago *cough*)
1.) Private password protected conversations (no more parents overhearing part if not both parts of a conversation over the phone). You have the ability to talk with others without the fear of the parents figuring out what the hell is going on.
2.) Sex. While it may seem a bit innapropriate for the older crowd here, most people from the age of 13+ have sex on the mind, either sex appeal or actually shagging. While of course there may not be a whole lot of knowledge in the area, there's still the curiosity and since mom and dad usually won't take the time to explain sex as it might actually lead to little billy and suzie wanting to try it, they turn to the one source they can find.
3.) Information. Heard something about a war in Iraq, but all you know is mom is indifferent and dad thinks bush is some asshole for it. But you really would like to know what's going on, but can't understand it. Turn to the internet and a search engine, in a few hours you can deem yourself an expert on middle eastern politics.
4.) Pop-Culture. Want to know what's cool and what's not cool and be able to actually survive highschool? Then you need to know what's "hip" and "Cool". So MTV.com and others like it will guide you through the pains of trying to look "normal" and not be a spectacle. There's three types of people in highschool "popular" "normal" and "bad popular". "Bad popular" is basically the kid everyone knows but everyone picks on, if in highschool you want to avoid at all costs this classification. So best way, spend as much dough as you can muster up and stay "normal" with the cool shoes and correct name brands.
5.) Homework. Yes it's true the internet is a vast tool of conquest in knowledge. But even better, no more turning to the index of a book. Hop on to your local libraries website and do a keyword search in a book. AMAZINGLY enough you will know exactly where the boston tea party is mentioned in the first 100 books that are the authroity on the subject. All by never stepping foot in the library, opening the book, or god forbid reading the damned thing. You can find someone elses blog/essay on the subject and get it dumbed down enough to where you can "write it in your own words". "Write it in your own words" is a new form of "writing" where you take the same basic concept and write it in a different manner with different words thus negating any type of plagerism.
All-in-all the TV is there for when someone else is on the computer or there's no emails or active people on your buddy list. Then and only then, you'll hop on the couch and turn on the TV. And what do teenagers watch? Exactly what I said above, but they don't get it in such mass quantities, it's like methadome for a crack addict, keeps ya at bay, but you still don't like it as much.
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
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.
So, what, is this our generation's "When I was YOUR age" event?
Previous: "When I was YOUR age, sonny, we used to go outside and play baseball out by the sandlot! Not all this TV watching crap you kids today do..."
Today: "When I was YOUR age, sonny, we used to watch TV all day on the couch! Not all this new-fangled 'internet' crap you kids today do..."
Future: "When I was YOUR age, sonny, we used to log onto the internet all the time on the computer! Not this new-fangled starship crap you kids today do..."
Demanding constant attention will only lead to attention.
If television offered free porn to kids who are smart enough to admit to being over 18, television might start being as important is the web is to today's youth :)