Mobile devices have, for the first time, overtaken television in the fight for our eyeballs.
According to a report from Flurry, using data from comScore and the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Americans now spend 177 minutes per day, on average, on their mobile devices. That’s nine minutes more on average than they spend watching TV.
Compare that to the beginning of this year, when Americans spent 162 minutes per day on their mobile devices but 168 minutes glued to the TV.
Of course, “glued” to the TV might not be entirely accurate. Americans are surely not spending nearly three hours a day on their phones and then more than two and a half hours watching TV. Anyone with a smartphone knows that there has to be some overlap. When’s the last time you watching a couple hours of TV without looking as your phone or tablet as well?
Flurry agrees, but still notes the impressive shift in consumer attention.
“While we don’t have a way to measure the overlap in time spent, other than our own families’ experiences, we believe that there is plenty of overlap between the time spent on TV and that on mobile devices. It is a tall order to believe that the smart device (and app) industry, which didn’t exist six and half years ago, can take out an industry entrenched in every American household since the middle of the last century. But it has happened. Smart devices are practical, and are glued to consumers 24/7/365. Those factors, combined with the content explosion on these devices through millions of apps, helped mobile snatch the big prize from television. As of September 2014, it is a new world in the American living room,” says the company.
Still, TV isn’t dead. For the past two and a half years boob tube viewing has been steady. In Q1 of 2012, we watched 168 minutes of TV a day, and in Q3 2014, we also watch 168 minutes on average.
Over the past two years, our devices have been pulling more and more of our attention. Remember how we’re now spending nearly three hours a day buried in our phones? Just a couple years ago we weren’t even spending a full two hours. In the past couple of years, your mobile devices have stolen more than an hour of your daily time.
How do you feel about that?
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