Technology has become an increasingly important factor in our daily lives, but the pace of change in the way people consume content has been slower than anticipated.
Here are some of the key takeaways from a new study, which is the latest in a series of reports from The Atlantic.1.
We are still watching less TV, but we’re watching more online.
According to a recent report from comScore, the amount of TV we watch online has fallen by about 8% in the past two years.
That’s because of the rise of streaming services like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video.
The number of hours people spend on TV rose by about 20% between 2015 and 2016.
But while the majority of our TV viewing is now done online, about half of all TV watching now takes place in person.2.
The internet is taking over.
While we were mostly watching TV, the internet is becoming a bigger part of our lives.
According the comScore study, internet usage has grown at a much faster rate than TV.
By 2021, nearly a quarter of all internet users will be over the age of 18.3.
The future is not set in stone.
The study also found that a lot of people still prefer to watch TV over the internet.
But it’s not just that the internet has become more popular: people are also watching more on the internet than they ever have before.
4.
We have a very different way of consuming media now than we did a decade ago.
People are spending more time watching TV than they did in 2010.
In 2019, we were spending about an hour a day on TV.
In 2021, we spent about seven hours a day.
And, as the study points out, we’re still watching about the same amount of content online as we did ten years ago.5.
The web is becoming increasingly popular.
ComScore found that 56% of people watched TV on the web in 2019, but only 37% of those same people still watched that show on TV ten years later.6.
Technology is the new television.
The comScore report found that by 2021, 70% of all video streamed online will be made available to people who don’t have access to a TV set.
That means that by the time you get your first Netflix subscription, you’ll be able to stream all of your shows on your tablet or laptop.7.
People have been watching TV for a long time.
According a study by the University of British Columbia, more than half of us watch television at least once a week.
But we’re not watching TV as much as we used to.
More than a quarter (27%) of us watched television less than a decade earlier.8.
Technology and the internet are moving closer together.
A lot of the time, when people watch a new show, they are more likely to have an experience that feels different from what they have seen before.
In fact, in a survey of more than 3,000 adults conducted by Pew Research, about two-thirds of people said they were more likely than ever to say they watched a show online, with the most popular platforms coming in second place (Amazon Prime Video and Netflix).9.
You can’t trust the TV you see.
A recent report by comScore found people watch more TV on their mobile phones than they do on their TVs.
And a 2016 study from the University for Creative Technologies at Oxford found that almost one-third of U.K. adults use a computer to watch content.
But when you’re looking at the overall TV consumption data, it’s clear that TV is becoming more and more important.10.
TV is the future.
ComStat says that, by 2021 (if you exclude 2021 when Netflix went live), there will be an average of about two hours of television per day.
The more people watch TV, they will consume more content online, and the more TV they watch, the more content they will watch on their tablets and laptops.11.
We’re not as interested in watching TV.
As part of the Atlantic’s #Takeback2020 campaign, we are encouraging everyone to take back their TVs and set them to watch more.
The hashtag #TakeBackTV is trending globally, and there are more than 20 million tweets, and more than 15 million posts, calling for TV to be available to everyone.12.
It’s not a new phenomenon.
In the 1950s, more people watched television than movies.
But by the mid-1980s, television had been overtaken by movies.
And today, more Americans watch television than films.13.
We don’t know what to expect.
It could be that we’re seeing a return to more traditional TV viewing patterns.
Or it could be the case that we’ve entered a new age of TV, in which people are watching more TV.
Or maybe it could just be that people are looking for something different than they used to, in part because the technology has changed so much.
