More Everything

A report at FT.com sums up a recent survey by Jupiter Research. The amount of time devoted by Europeans to web use has, for the first time, over­taken the time they spend reading news­pa­pers and magazines:

Print con­sump­tion has remained static at three hours a week in the past two years, as time spent online has doubled from two to four hours. Viewers are also spending more time watching tele­vi­sion, up from 10 hours to 12 a week.

The adoption of broad­band is shown to have a very positive effect on online consumption:

In France, where 79 per cent of online house­holds have broad­band con­nec­tions, the typical user is online for five hours a week, compared with only three hours a week in Germany, which has a broad­band pen­et­ra­tion rate of 42 per cent.

Interestingly, the report iden­ti­fies no losers in its survey, only increasing media con­sump­tion all round. Once again, the idea that tra­di­tional media are being driven into bank­ruptcy as our lives move online is shown to be not strictly true. Since there are no more hours in the day, one can only assume that the real losers are books, fresh air, face-​​to-​​face social­ising and sleep. At the risk of sounding like my mum, this is not a devel­op­ment I can whole­heartedly welcome as positive, as much as I love the net.

However, the averages supplied in the headline stat­istics mask some clear dif­fer­ences in con­sump­tion patterns based on age:

The research found “a very clear new media/​old media gen­er­a­tional divide”, Mr Mulligan [research director at Jupiter] said. Under-​​25s now spend six hours a week online, half the time they spend watching tele­vi­sion but three times the hours they devote to print.

So, the average amount of time spent online is four hours, but young people are up to six hours, and they’re watching less TV and reading less. It seems as though the implic­a­tion of this is that the trends are reversed at the age of 25. Older people are watching a lot more TV and reading more papers and magazines. Their internet use must be far less than double what it was, to com­pensate for the six hours consumed by younger people.

Thanks, Antony

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