Americans Spend As Much Time on Internet As Watching TV: Report
It had to happen. For years, we've been typing away at computer keyboards, often missing our favorite episodes of "House," figuring we'd DVR it for later viewing. Until it became apparent: we weren't keeping up with the DVR. TV shows were overflowing the disc and had to be deleted. We were having too much fun either hacking, creating, or playing games (for the higher-level computer users) or Facebooking, recipe-saving, and cyber-chatting (for those at the lower end). In any case, Internet use rivaled television use.
Now, it's become equal. According to Forrester Research, Americans are spending as much time using the Internet as they are watching television. Plus, the amount of time Mom, Dad and the kids are punching the computer keys has increased 121 percent over the last five years.
You'd think that this would all be skewed to the younger ages, but there you'd be wrong. According to Forrester's research, this is the first year that people in older age groups are Internet-involved. Although the amont of Internet use for personal reasons begins to taper off for those over 66, the amount is less than you'd think. Personal use is 12 hours a week for adults under 30 years old and then slows to eight hours a week at 66. Grandpa is doing genealogy back there in the den, and don't you forget it
However, the findings of this survey do not mean that people are abandoning their TV sets in droves. Internet-streaming television aside, the time people spend with their television sets seems to have remained stable. However, the time people allocate to radio and printed publications is definitely sliding.
According to Jackie Rousseau-Anderson, an analyst who wrote the report for Forrester, consumers see themselves splitting the time they spend with offline and online media equally.
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