It seems our electronic devices now own us, rather than the other way around. New research has found that the average US consumer spends 50 hours every week in front of some kind of screen.
According to the latest report from The Diffusion Group (TDG) entitled "The Future of Smartphone Video, 2016-2025," "per-capita personal screen activity" in America has grown steadily to 50 hours per week. That works out to about 30% of the total number of hours in a week (24x7=168). And if you subtract eight hours a day spent sleeping, then it's 45% of our waking lives, and growing. TV continues to be the dominant screen, with viewers spending an average of 31.3 hours with it weekly. But smartphones are increasing their share of screen time. According to TDG research, viewers are spending 8.6 hours per week with their smartphones. Social networking also accounted for a significant share of screen time, with more than four hours dedicated to it weekly. The research firm believes that there is a significant relationship between social networking and mobile usage, which it calls "So-Mo." In particular, TDG sees an opportunity for video services stemming from this relationship. Today, time spent viewing video on social networks via a smartphone accounts for .13 hours of screen time a week, just 10% of total time spent on a smartphone. But TDG believes it is set to ramp up dramatically in the next decade. TDG forecasts that "SoMo Video" will experience massive growth in the coming years, from 684 million daily viewing minutes in 2016 to 7.4 billion by 2025. As a share of total smartphone video viewing, it will grow from 17% in 2016 to 43% in 2025. Usage of live streaming apps such as Facebook Live, Periscope and Snapchat is picking up, as we discussed in a previous post. Statements from Mark Zuckerberg about most of Facebook being video in the future, and the forthcoming launch of YouTube Connect, only add to the sense that social video is on its way. This research suggests that network operators need to prepare for its impact on their networks, and that mobile operators may be more affected than fixed-line providers. (See Social Video Could Be the Next Great Challenge for Network Operators.) It would also appear in this vision of the future that we will not only spend half our lives staring at a smartphone screen, but we will also be simultaneously live streaming our viewing of other people's live streaming.— Aditya Kishore, Practice Leader, Video Transformation, Telco Transformation