In the latest report on WARC media, Stephen Whiteside discusses some of the findings of the IPA's TouchPoints, an annual survey which aims to provide an insight into the media use of an average adult in the UK. Respondents are asked to record their activities for every waking half hour over a seven day period, thus providing a unique view of peoples’ daily lives and how their media usage fits into these patterns. According to this year’s survey television is still the UK’s most frequently-used medium, with the average adult Briton spending almost a quarter of his or her waking time watching television. This amounts to an average of 3.69 hours a day during the week, and 4.29 hours on each weekend day (compared with 3.71 hours and 4.02 hours respectively in last year’s survey). By comparison, an average of only 3.5% of their time was spent using the internet, which is the same amount time spent reading a newspaper or magazine. For people with home internet access, time spent online rose to 10%, though this was still short of the average time spent by UK consumers listening to radio (12%).
In terms of mobile phone usage the survey found that over half of mobile phone users (53%) said they could not imagine life without their mobile phone. Some 90% of mobile phone owners sent at least one text message a day, with 6% sending more than ten, this rises to 19% among 15-24 year olds. Over a third of texts were sent while watching TV, 17% when listening to the radio, 14% when using the internet, and 7% when reading. Nearly two-thirds of mobile phone owners found receiving commercial text messages intrusive, with 62% saying they ignored all such messages they received.
This WARC report is available from the WARC database (on the A-Z list of library databases via Portal) available to staff, students & faculty of London Business School.
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