Jennifer Dudley-Nicholson | March 05, 2009

AUSTRALIANS spend most of their waking hours consuming media and are spending more time online than ever before, a study has found.
We also are ditching our desktop computers for laptops, accessing the internet wirelessly and almost all internet users have broadband access at home, the report said.

The Nielsen Online Internet and Technology Report surveyed more than 2000 Australians and found the average Aussie spent 89.2 hours a week consuming media last year or almost 80 per cent of their waking hours.

Nielsen Online research director Tony Marlow said this was an increase of almost five hours on 2007 and an extra 17.8 hours from 2006.

"Given the average Australian is only awake for around 112 hours per week, it's surprisingly just how many of those waking hours are dedicated to media consumption," Mr Marlow said.

"We've seen some pretty extraordinary increases in the past few years, however we would anticipate a levelling out in consumption hours of the next few years as Australians simply run out of hours in the day."

The survey found people aged over 16 spent an average of 16.1 hours on the internet each week, 12.9 hours watching TV, 8.8 hours listening to the radio, 3.7 hours on a mobile phone and 2.8 hours reading newspapers.

Some users also used more than one form of media at once, with more than three in five internet surfers watching TV simultaneously and half surfing the web while listening to the radio.

The Nielsen Online report also found ownership of desktop computers fell 10 per cent last year, in favour of wireless technology such as laptops, and broadband use soared. More than 97 per cent of Australian internet users reported having a broadband connection at home, up from 84 per cent in 2007.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics last year reported that more than half of all Australian households have a broadband internet connection, including 800,000 new connections from the 2007/08 financial year.
The Courier-Mail

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