With Memorial Day weekend quickly approaching and the graduation/wedding season upon us, I hope to start spending as much time as possible taking in the spring weather out of doors. I, like many other Americans, will just need to find a way to balance my email-checking, blog-reading, Pandora-listening and NYTimes.com surfing with the enticing fresh-air activities of late spring.
According to a new report from Media-Screen, my daily leisure-time Internet habits are far from atypical. In the article, “Americans Spend Half of Their Spare Time Online” Jack Loechner explains some of the report’s findings. On a given weekday, broadband users spend about 48% of their spare time online. While online, the most popular media activities are checking email and visiting Web sites for personal reasons. The report also stated that while almost 50% of younger users say they learn about new entertainment online, only 25% say they learn about it through television. This is not surprising–with the plethora of social networking, video and blog sites that people in my generation visit daily there are far more opportunities to learn about a new TV show, movie, book or popular viral video than during an evening in front of the TV.
The report has obvious implications for advertisers. As Josh Crandall, managing director of Media-Screen states in the article:
“Currently, the proportion of advertising resources devoted to the Internet (about seven percent according to ZenithOptimedia) is nominal relative to the value it generates… among fans… consumers, on a typical weekday, spend more than 40% of their time consuming media online…”
But what could this mean for the rest of us? Does spending so much of our time “virtually” interacting and consuming entertainment via the Internet detract from time we might spend actually socializing or engaging in other activities? Or is the Internet merely replacing much of the time we used to spend in front of the TV?
Weather-permitting, I think I will check my emails and read up on my favorite blogs on my porch this weekend. If I am spending 48% of my leisure time online at the very least I can multi-task by getting some fresh-air while I’m at it.
