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I was stumped to see the average minutes each country uses consuming media (TV, PC, Smartphone & Tablet). My guess would have surely been USA in the top 5, along with all European countries. I was wrong.
Indonesia, Philippines, China and Vietnam are in the top 5, with Brazil being the only non-Asian country coming in at 4th. With Indonesia and Philippines using up 540 & 531 minutes per day respectively. That’s a whopping 9 hours a day in front of a screen.
What’s more surprising to me is the leader in the number of minutes in front of a smartphone with an average of 193 minutes (That’s more than 3 hours per day!), no it’s not your sister in the USA with unlimited everything talking to her BFF; It’s actually Nigeria. Yes Nigeria with the rich prince that wants you to send your bank information.
When it comes to being in front of a Tablet screen, Philippines, Indonesia & Thailand lead the pack with 115, 111 & 95 minutes daily.
Of course, the USA has to lead in Desktop or laptop PC use right? Not in this case, China, Vietnam and Russia top this list at 161, 160 & 158 respectively. That’s a 3-way tie for me.
So where does the USA fall in all this? It must lead in something? We are the leaders in the world in everything right? Well apparently we don’t lead but come very close to leading in watching Television screens, a relative tie to our big brother the UK.
What puzzled me the most though is which country had the least number of minutes in front of a screen. Can you guess without looking at the chart? Take a minute, here’s the list of countries:
USA, Germany, China, Indonesia, Thailand, Russia, Philippines, Vietnam, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, India, Poland, South Korea, UK, Canada, Slovakia, Hungary, Italy, Japan, France, Czech Republic, Argentina, Brazil, Kenya, Poland, Mexico, Turkey, Canada, Spain, Australia, South Africa, Columbia & Nigeria.
Well, did you think? Which one came to mind? Let’s just say it’s the country that is my favorite place to visit. Somewhere I’ve been more times than any other place in the world, as a tourist. It is a place where an empire ruled the world for millennia and shaped the world. An area that had one of the oldest civilizations, yet as a country, it’s younger than the USA. Yes, Italy, as a nation is younger than the USA. We became a nation by declaring our independence on July 4th, 1776 (recognized in 1783), and Italy became unified in 1861 (March 17 to be exact), and became a republic in 1946.
Well, enough history lesson, I was still amazed at how it has the least number of minutes in front of a screen. I thought about it, I think they enjoy their surroundings, nature, food, antiquities etc so much that they spend a lot more time outside then they do in front of a TV or computer screen. About the smartphone and Tablets, well I don’t know. Maybe it’s their culture, the price of the devices, the unemployment
Another thing I noticed, in the list of the countries they didn’t survey Ukraine, Portugal, Sweden, Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, Venezuela, and specially Greece & Iceland. I would be curious to see how the relationship between the current state of finance in a country, and it’s prior state of finance plays a role. as an example:
Greece and Iceland are in dire straits, but they used to be much better off before. This is the same with Italy. It’s on the same path if nothing changes. But when it comes to countries using the most number of minutes in front of screens, they’re countries that have not had great economies to start with.
Is that the reason? Is it because they have less access to TV screens? I don’t think so, because except Vietnam, most other underprivileged countries have a higher number of TV minutes than Italy. Maybe it’s because the people in those countries rely more on other virtual places, or lives or experiences by being in front of screens that lead to a different dimension like the web, or movies, or communicating with people in other areas, etc? Is there a correlation? I look forward to reading more about this.
The study was done by Milward Brown AdReaction, 2014. They surveyed by asking respondents “Roughly how long did you spend yesterday watching Television, using a laptop or PC to access the Internet, spend time on a smartphone or tablet?” And the survey population or at least the respondents were 16-44 across 30 countries, who had access to TV and a smartphone and/or tablet. The population of the 30 countries surveyed in the study collectively represent ~70% of the world population.
Original location for the histogram: http://images.bwbx.io/cms/2014-05-28/viewing-by-country1.png