NEWS29 January 2015

Texting as important as TV for young people

UK — As much time is spent by young people on text communications as on watching TV or films on TV sets said Alison Preston, head of media literacy research, Ofcom at the MRS Kids and Youth Conference today.

While adults spend more than 11 hours a day on media activity, this rises to more than 14 hours for younger adults ( 16- to 24-year-olds) according to Ofcom’s Digital Day research conducted by Kantar.

For 11- to 15-year-olds it equates to 9.5 hours, although this is compressed into seven hours of actual time.

Among the other findings from the research were that half of all time spent watching AV by teenagers and young people is ‘pull’ content.

In terms of time spent on different media, just over half ( 52%) for 11- to 15-year-olds is on live TV, compared with 69% for adults, and 19% is on short online video clips (which only makes up 2% of adults’ time). Watching DVDs and Blueray is 12% of 6- to 11-year-olds time.

When broader communications are looked at, email is used most by adults (one third of their two hours a day), compared with 19% for 16- to 24-year-olds – who spend 4.5 hours a day on communications. For these older teens and young adults 25% of their comms time is on social networking sites (compared with 18% for adults).

Mobile phones have steady reach across the day, with one third of 16- to 24-year-olds using them at midnight.