Ofcom report - people spending more time erm...wasting time

Interesting new statistics from Ofcom about people's habits during the current multimedia explosion.

For me the striking thing is that people aren't changing their habits much - just doing more.

The report shows that Consumers spent 429 minutes, or more than seven hours a day, watching television, listening to radio, surfing the internet and making fixed-line and mobile calls in 2007, compared with 423 minutes in 2002.

This is an incredibly huge sounding amount, although I suppose you've got to take into account people will probably be doing other things, including driving, at the same time.

You might have thought traditional pursuits such as the simple telly would have seen a huge decline as a result of the increased platforms on offer.

But no - in 2007, 218 minutes a day were spent watching television, compared with 224 in 2002 - not a great deal of difference.

So basically social networking on the internet, texting, sending video messages, streaming your tedious existence pointlessly over the net through bambuser and so on is all in addition to whatever radio, tv and phone calls you were doing before!

You see those people over there in the corner? You probably don't recognise them, but they're your family. Go on, try and talk to them. Perhaps even go out somewhere together. Oh - someone's written a pithy comment on your Facebook wall. Better reply. Chance gone.