USER

DATA
SCREEN TIME
By Jacqueline Howard
The average American spends nearly half a day
staring at a screen according to a new Nielsen
Company audience report. The report reveals
that adults in the United States devoted
about 10 hours and 39 minutes each day to consuming
media during the i rst quarter of this year.
The report, which was released Monday, included
how much time we spend daily using our tablets,
smartphones, personal computers, multimedia devices,
video games, radios, DVDs, DVRs and TVs.
“The overall results don’t surprise me,” said Steve
Gortmaker, a professor of sociology at Harvard
University who was not involved in the report.
“The number of devices we have proliferate the
overall time spent with screens, and the number of
devices is increasing,” he added. “A lot of people
have been thinking about how or whether this time
spent is a good use of their time, which becomes a
deep issue.” he added. “If people are spending over
50 hours a week with media for entertainment purposes,
then there’s really no time left for any of the
other things we value.”
The report reveals a dramatic one-hour increase
over 2015 in how often the average American adult
gorges on media in a day. During the same time period
last year, people spent about nine hours and 39
minutes engaging with gadgets.
This jump could be credited to the rise in smartphone
and tablet usage, the report shows. Nielsen
collects data on media consumption only, so time
spent on a smartphone or tablet doing other things,
from taking photos to texting, was not included in
the report’s data.
About 81% of adults in the United States have
smartphones, according to the report, which are
used about one hour and 39 minutes daily on average
to consume media. <
Hours per Day
Mobile
Desktop/Laptop
Other Connected Devices
TV
9.4
9.0
8.2
7.6
0.4
2.4
0.4
1.6
2.3
0.8
9.6
9.9
2.6
2.8
2.6 2.5
2.3 2.4 2.4
0.3 0.3
0.3
0.3 0.4
4.4 4.6 4.6 4.4 4.5 4.3
2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015
USER
17