Most Australians prefer a balanced diet for their media and entertainment as they nominate surfing the Internet and watching TV as sharing equal status, according to the latest Deloitte Media Consumer Survey. But social networking is steaming ahead, now used by an eyebrow-raising 80 percent of Australians as their main means of communication.
The survey found 60 percent of 2000 Australians across four generations and five age groups put using the Internet for social or personal reasons in their top three entertainment activities, equal with watching TV on any device.
Currently, Deloitte says, Australians spend an average 44 percent of their time watching TV and movie content traditionally: ie, as linear broadcasts. But 14- to 24-year-olds spend only 26 percent of their viewing time watching linear broadcasts and 31 percent on streamed content.
Overall engagement with social media and the frequency with which consumers are using it are increasing, Deloitte says – and anyone subjected to a steady stream of tweets or Facebook messages from acquaintances knows that only too well.
Deloitte reckons about 80 percent of Australian respondents use social media, up from 65 percent in 2012. Some 59 percent use social media on a daily basis, and 23 percent do so more than three times a day.
“Social media use is so ingrained in Australia that for the first time more than half of survey respondents (51 percent) stated that the time they spend interacting with others through social media is as valuable as the time they spend together in person,” says Deloitte telco, media and technology leader Stuart Johnston.
“Keeping up to date with breaking news is one of the top three reasons for using social for 36 percent of survey respondents.”
To no-one’s great surprise, there was a substantial fall in magazine subscriptions in this year’s survey, with just 15 percent of households purchasing them, compared with 27 percent in 2012. Nevertheless 60 percent of respondents who have read a magazine in the last 12 months said they preferred printed copies.
