How 18-34 Americans Use Electronic Media in 2024

The recent book The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt traces the causes to the smartphone and the currently dominant version of social media Jonathan finds that the replacement of play in the real world by these specific media types has made young people especially those 1114 undergoing puberty more likely to become conformists and emulators of people who have prestige within the social media domain who are not in the classical sense great role modelsamp8230 with lasting effects into adulthoodAs I reported in a MediaVillage article last July a new social media platform WeAre8 is attempting to overturn the first generation of social media platforms using AI to eliminate putdowns hate shaming and bullyingTaking the opportunity offered by my consultancy for Nielsen I felt it would be useful to you for me to publish a bit of the data that Nielsenamp8217s Peter Katsingris compiles every quarter In this post Iamp8217ll contrast the use of electronic media by 1834 vs the other adult age groups in the USAFor example letamp8217s contrast the 1834 segment with its cognitive and affective challenges with the ruling generation which is largely 5064 in terms of who is running the big corporations The electronic media consumption by 1834 in its total volume is less than twothirds of the amount of time 50amp821164yearolds spend with electronic media We hope this is a sign that these youngsters are consciously spending as much time as possible in the real world rather than the virtual worldThe share of time spent with digital across all devices TV sets smartphones tablets is 53 for 1834 and 28 for 5064The command cohort 5064 still spends more than 45 hours a day of live television versus less than a half hour a day of live TV for 1834 This is the biggest difference between the two age groups in terms of electronic media usageThe pattern stands out quite clearly when comparing the four age groups live TV usage increases stepwise as one grows olderWhat could account for the apparent 1834 abandonment of what had been the hero media type for so longI asked the right questions and Nielsen was able to answer them I was surprised and happy at the findings 1834 has not abandoned televisionvideo 1834 is actually spending more time with televisionvideo than it did in 1992 I asked Peter Katsingris for the earliest date he could report on without a heavy liftIn May of 1992 the total number of hours per week spent watching TV in the US was 24 hours and 30 minutes Today the comparable figure is 25 hours and 35 minutesThe reason it is invisible in the graph above is that the latter graph created by the quarterly trending study covers only the inhome usage and it doesnamp8217t break out the video parts of usage of computers smartphones and tablets Here is what the picture looks like based upon the special tabulation Peter agreed to do for meOf course back in 1992 there was no viewing of video on computers smartphones or tablets and the level of out of home viewing was quite low about 23 except for sports and was picked up by meters as visitor viewingSo 1834 is not antiTVvideo They are spending good chunks of time with it itamp8217s just in lots of places that must be added together accurately which is obviously not easySome of that video is shortform and Nielsen also has those figures But some of what is on shortform video is now getting better and could be picked up by grownup TV companies Longform currently has higher ROAS than shortform more as a result of the skip button countdown than based on the quality of the content although most of the shortform content still has a long way to go to catch up in terms of openness to emotional immersion in ads that most TV contexts createNote that 1834 is still the heaviest consumer of videogames in terms of time spent vs all other adult age groups spending more than twice as much time as 18 playing games on a game console If that use of TV set were added on to the figures above it would bring the 1834 total weekly hours to over 28 NielsenAlso note that 1834 is also the heaviest consumer of social networking in terms of time spent vs any other adult age group 8 hours 53 minutes per week 91 of it is on smartphones the rest on computers and tablets NielsenHow can TV content be made more attractive to 1834First of all donamp8217t expect to be able to vastly increase the 1834 time spent with TV it is actually already quite high They need the rest of the time for school work play sex videogames sleep eating etcWhat you can shift is you can capture a higher share from away from shortforms and probably also from social media as it is today causing stress more than funQuibi tried a logical approach shortforms of premium content It did not work Perhaps it needed more time or better marketing to wear it inAnother approach which should be tested is serialized comedrama where new shortform episodes come out almost daily and not on any fixed scheduleBig TV can also work with amateur talent that shows promise as creatorsinfluencers andor youth sports stars bands etc creating new formats of every length and cadence and including interactivity as much as possible Every smartphone is a video camera Time to get creative That should be a cause for great excitementPosted at MediaVillage through the Thought Leadership selfpublishing platformClick the social buttons to share this story with colleagues and friendsThe opinions expressed here are the author39s views and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillageorgMyersBizNet

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How 18-34 Americans Use Electronic Media in 2024

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Bill Harvey

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How 18-34 Americans Use Electronic Media in 2024

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