Average Briton spends almost half of their waking life using media and communications

The world got a peek into the communication and media habits of the average Briton when Ofcom, the UK communications and media regulator published its annual Communication Market Report on 19 August. Revealing that we spends around 15 hours 45 minutes every day awake, of this time, we spend seven hours and five minutes 'engaged in media and communications activities'. This can also be translated as, that in the UK the average Briton spends almost half of their waking life using media and communications! The country has met these statistics with a cocktail mixture of shock, indifference and a touch of moral panic. The report's data comes from industry sources and a survey of 1,138 adults.

Peter Philips of Ofcom says, "For the first time we have mapped the totality of communications use over one day". The statistics suggest people in the UK spend seven hours a day watching TV, surfing the net and using their mobile phones. However, the average person actually squeezes in the equivalent of nearly nine hours of media and communications by multi-tasking on several devices. For example, the report found that adults aged between 16 and 24 appeared to consume the least, spending just six hours and 35 minutes a day on the phone, laptop, radio or television. Yet, by multitasking - effectively using two or more devices at once - the survey found that young adults were able to squeeze the equivalent of nine hours 32 minutes worth of consumption into that time.

That's what you call dexterity and is due to the rise in the mobile internet and the use of smartphones, making it easy for people to multi-task on the move. The report says that the number of people using their phone to surf the web currently stands at 13.5m people, which has nearly tripled since 2008, when the figure stood at 5.7m. This increase had been driven by one site - Facebook. It accounts for 45% of all mobile web use in the UK, followed by Google at 8%.

Facebook dominates fixed line broadband use. The report says that social networking now accounts for nearly one-quarter of all time spent online, with Facebook accounting for the majority of traffic. The majority of users of the site - and other networks - are between 16 and 34, although Ofcom said that there was a growing trend for older people to sign up to the services.

The report also shows that traditional media is still holding its own, where good old television still dominates people's media habits, with the average person spending around 3.8 hours watching daily television; while radio was still an important medium for people. The report also mapped the current state of broadband in the UK and suggests that internet take-up has now reached 73% in the UK, the majority of which is fixed broadband. Despite the growth in online TV services and devices that allow people to record television, most shows were watched via traditional live broadcasts.

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