Thursday, June 12, 2008

8 hours of media consumption per day

I know I'm in the television and cross media business, and I should be thrilled that people are availing themselves of an increasing amount of media. I should, but in truth, I'm not.

A recent survey foretells that US citizens will consume an average of 8 hours of media per day by 2013. Of that, close to 50% will be traditional television, the rest web programming, games, DVD:s, mobile content etc.

The reason I'm not thrilled? I honestly believe that this is not the way to go. My firm belief is that we would need a healthy balance between entertainment and so-called Real Life. EIGHT HOURS per day spent consuming media means EIGHT HOURS less to live your own life, to meet people, to really DO SOMETHING, to create something MEANINGFUL... To be a human, not a consumer.

I realize I'm probably a hopeless romantic when it comes to this, but I would be quite happy to see what would happen would we turn off all television and Internet media, close all DVD-rentals etc for a week or two, and let people try to find out what they would do instead. I believe that media has its firm place in the world of man, but it shouldn't be the single most important thing by far.

Seeing as man in 99 cases out of 100 takes the easy way out - i.e. turns on the telly and wastes away - something else must happen. I hope it does.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Jau, this agrees. On the other hand, more and more of the people I know have now thrown their tellies out and actually started to concentrate on the real life. Maybe it, in the end, is just a question of realizing.