79% Of UK Consumers Engage In Multi-Screening

Internet tools and the digital world are an inseparable part of our lives, but spending time online has never been so attractive to Britons. Not only are they among the most avid media users globally, but they simply cannot get enough of it, so they adopt multi-screen viewing as well, a new survey from the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA) suggests.

The survey, which looked into the media habits of more than 5,500 UK consumers, found that on average they spend three and a half hours watching TV, one and a half hours being online and just under two hours listening to the radio every day. Moreover, four in five of those polled (79%) admit they simultaneously use two or more types of media in a 30-minute stretch of time. In comparison, the number of people doing so in 2010 was 76%.

Although it is a common belief that people do not communicate face-to-face any more, it seems that this is not quite the case. In fact, two-thirds of time spent communicating is still done in the conventional way, but this has dropped four percentage points from last year. Some 14% of people’s communication time is spent talking on the phone, while e-mail and social media generate 6% and 5% respectively.

In addition, Britons’ affection for social media translates into an average of more than six and a half hours spent on social networks a week, with 44% of respondents visiting such platforms at least once every seven days.