For the first time, a survey has shown that Americans of all ages spend more time on the Internet than in front of the TV.
Young people have been flocking to their laptops and computers rather than sit in front of the TV for the last few years, but the survey released by Forrester Research showed that older Americans are starting to shift their leisure time away from the TV as well. These results seem to suggest that the practice of cutting the cord from cable providers and consuming all content over the Internet, whether through movie streaming services like Netflix or TV streaming websites like Hulu, is gaining traction. The survey results from Forrester show that more people are using the Internet to watch video, 33% of adults said they do so now, as opposed to only 18% in 2007. According to Jacqueline Anderson who wrote the report for Forrester, young people are becoming more accustomed to watching TV online.
“For the younger population, the TV is still important, but where they’re getting that content from is changing,” said Anderson. “For the generations that are coming up, that’s where we’re going to see the cut.”
Internet use is still the province of the young, with people under 30 spending 12 hours a week connected to the ‘tubes. Grandma, Grandpa, and other people over 66 years of age, spend around 8 hours a week on the Internet, but this time is spent with more typical browsing than video watching. Anecdotal evidence suggests that my Grandma’s farm is “really beautiful.”
I believe that this data is the beginning of the end for TV. There will always be a place for having a large selection of broadcast channels from which to choose, but I think that people want to watch what they want to watch when they want to watch it. And that means the Internet will only continue to grow as a vehicle for video and other content.
Source: NY Times
