StatCan - Over the past decade, Internet content has evolved to the point where it now represents a significant source of information and entertainment for many people. The Internet has changed the way that many individuals and organizations gather information, and has undoubtedly had some influence on their use of traditional media.
While few Canadians had Internet access and went online to gather news information in the mid-1990’s, today many use the Internet to access online newspapers, reports, discussion forums and even blogs. In 2005 for example, about 62% of home Internet users - or 38% of Canadian adults overall - went online to view news or sports information (Statistics Canada, 2006).
Internet vs. television
he widespread use of the Internet has attracted the attention of those working in traditional media, such as television, radio and print. While they must now compete with this new source of information, some have also begun to view the Internet as a growth opportunity (Media Audit, 2004).
Television has long dominated the entertainment landscape in Canada. Yet as the Internet evolved, particularly through increased bandwidth and greater diversity of content, visions of a battleground between traditional television and the Internet began to emerge. While television is sometimes viewed as a passive form of entertainment1, Internet use tends to be more interactive - users can both receive and send information, and can more easily tailor their experience to suit their own interests. In addition, there is the theory that time spent on the Internet must necessarily take away from time previously allocated to other activities - sometimes referred to as the ‘time displacement’ model (Robinson, et. al., 2000). Evidence abounds that some Internet users have in fact cut back on their
television viewing since starting to use the Internet (Kraut, et. al., 2005; Dryburgh, 2001).
Media patterns and the Internet
Data from Statistics Canada’s 2005 General Social Survey on time use provide a detailed snapshot of the media consumption patterns of Canadians. This survey asked respondents to report all of their activities2 over a 24-hour period. Initial findings show that during the course of the day, Canadians spend approximately two-and-a-half hours consuming traditional media, with television taking up a very large share of that time (Table 1). While moderate3 Internet users spent an average of nearly 14 minutes less time watching television during the day than those who did not use the Internet, once
respondents of similar social and demographic backgrounds were compared, the difference in time spent watching television was no longer statistically significant (see adjusted figures under the column, ‘Adj. Diff.’).
Most interestingly, heavier Internet users - those spending more than one hour on the Internet for personal use during the day - did not differ significantly in their television viewing time from Internet non-users, both before and after adjusting for differences in social and demographic characteristics.
This finding is particularly revealing when one considers that the average heavy Internet user dedicated two-and-a-half hours to using the Internet for leisure during the day, yet still found nearly the same amount of time to spend watching television. Although the survey is not longitudinal in nature and therefore cannot be used to assess whether Internet users cut their television viewing over a period of time, the lack of significant differences in television viewing between Internet users and non-users questions the extent to which Internet users might consider the Internet as a ‘replacement’ for television, or rather simply another form of information and entertainment.
Internet users are also avid consumers of other media. Although much Internet content is text-based, Internet users appear to remain interested in textual material in traditional formats. Internet users tend to spend slightly more time during the day reading books than non-users of the Internet (Table 1), and in the longer term, also tend to read books and magazines with greater frequency (Table 2). These findings echo those of earlier research which found that Internet users tend to be drawn to printed materials (Cole and Robinson 2002; Pronovost, 2002). Although non-users were less likely than Internet users to read books and magazines frequently, they were equally likely to be regular newspaper readers.
Internet users and other activities
In terms of other leisure activities, Internet users were more likely to attend movies or watch rented or purchased videos at home on a regular basis. And despite the fact that about onehalf (51%) of heavy Internet users stated that they listen to music that they downloaded on their computer at least once aweek, they were also more likely than non-users of the Internet to listen to music in traditional formats (e.g. CDs, DVDs, cassettes and records).
What is perhaps most interesting in Table 2 is the number of people who say they never use certain media: non-users of the Internet were more likely than Internet users to say that in the year 2005, they never read books or magazines, or watched films. The data illustrate that Internet users look tomany sources for information. Recent reports suggest this is true not only with respect to media use but also concerning the use of other information and communications technologies (ICTs). The concept of ‘media multiplexity’ describes how intensive users of one type of technology - such as the
Internet - are also likely to communicate frequently using other technologies, such as the telephone (Sciadas, 2006; Boase, et. al., 2006).
Active communicators and consumers
The findings presented here suggest that Internet users are active communicators and consumers of other media. Even heavy Internet users, averaging two-and-a-half hours per day on the Internet for personal use, spent an equal amount of time with traditional media. Based on the amount of timethey dedicate to various sources, it is entirely possible that Internet users continue to value the use of other media and technologies as distinct experiences.
Some of the data in this article first appeared in Statistics Canada’s Connectedness Series, August 2, 2006, (Veenhof, 2006)
