The Network Society - University of Massachusetts Amherst

Internet Users Watch Less Television
Internet and Society in a Global Perspective 311
In every country for which we have collected data, Internet users
watch less television than those who are not online. The amount of television
watched lessens, although not significantly, as users gain experience
on the net. It is not surprising that Internet users watch less
television than non-users since for many people their at-home, awake
time has been dominated by television; if they are to carve out time
from their lives to go online, it almost must come from television.
Figure 13.1 Number of hours of watched television per user and
non user of internet
Number of hours
30
25
20
15
10
5
0
15.9
20.2
11.2
14.5
13
18.7
18.3
22.9
11.8
17.5
20.9
Britain
Canada
Chile
(Santiago)
Germany
Hungary
Japan
Korea
Macao
Singapore
Taiwan
Users
Non-users
Looking at 2003 data and the 12 countries that collected information
on television use, the average across those countries is that nonusers
of the Internet watched 4.03 hours more television a week than
users. The country with the highest television viewing among users
and non-users is Japan and the nation with the lowest among the
countries measured is South Korea. In Japan non-users watch 26.3
hours of television per week (and users 20.9) while, just a few hundred
miles (and a great cultural divide) away, South Korean non-users
watch 14.5 hours of television a week and users watch 10.2.
26.3
10.2
14.5
16.2
18.1
20.4
24.3
12.9
15.6
11.6
16.8
USA