Education

Middle Aged Folks Get Most Screen Time

By Kathleen Kennedy Manzo — March 27, 2009 1 min read
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I don’t know if we needed a study to confirm this, but the Council on Research Excellence released survey results this week showing that the youngest of the baby boomers are the biggest consumers of the video media among people age 45 or older. Those boomers ages 45 to 54 appear to be the biggest media consumers among all adults in the survey, spending more than 9 1/2 hours daily with blackberries, computers, televisions, and other video-capable devices.

The $3.5 million Video Mapping Study, conducted by the Ball State University Center for Media Design, found that despite the proliferation of media-enabled devices, television still consumes the most time out of the day of all adults. Television viewing consumes an average of 72 minutes a day among adults. Computer use came in second in the popularity of devices, bumping radio to the third-place spot.

“What differentiates this study from all other attempts to measure video exposure at the consumer level is its scale, the range of media covered and the fact that it is focused on consumers first and the media second,” Mike Bloxham, director of insight and research for the Ball State center, said in a statement. “It’s not a study about TV or the Web or any other medium—it’s about how, where, how often and for how long consumers are exposed to all media.”

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A version of this news article first appeared in the Digital Education blog.

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