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'Media quiet' a thing of the past

We already know that our lives are infested with technology, but a new study has investigated how little time we actually spend ‘media-free’. The research has revealed that most UK residents manage to get only an hour away from ‘media noise’ each day.

The figures from media consultancy M-Lab reveals that UK adults now have, on average, only 63 minutes per day of ‘media silence’ at home, but one in three (31%) now have media on all the time while at home, and a further 22% have only half an hour or less each day with no media playing.

Graham Williams, Director of M-Lab, said: “If you add it all up, the average person now spends more time on TV, radio, internet and phone calls than they actually spend at home - that explains why so many people now watch TV and surf the net at the same time - if we weren’t, we’d have no quiet time left at all.”

Evidencing how ever-present the media has become in our lives, 71% said listening to the TV or radio or using the Web was the last thing they did before going to sleep at night.

Therefore, and perhaps not surprisingly, more than one in four adults - 27% - said that having a TV in the bedroom was adversely affecting their sex life.

As for the business implications, Williams said: “We are clearly reaching a limit here - media companies have almost no space left to fill in our home lives. The opportunity to increase overall consumption now lies in reaching people on the move through mobile devices, or in leisure venues.

“Greater control over content will mean that irrelevant and intrusive media will be squeezed out of existence.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ruth Mitchell .