The typical American adult is using media for an hour a day more than last year, smartphones accounting for most of the increase.
People spent an average of 10 hours, 39 minutes each day with smartphones, tablets, TV, radio, computers and video games during the first three months of 2016, according to a Nielsen company study released this week. It was nine hours, 39 minutes during the same period in 2015.
Even those numbers are probably underestimated, since Nielsen doesn't count texting, taking selfies or talking on the phone when it measures the amount of time spent online on smartphones.
Glenn Enoch, senior vice-president of audience insights for Nielsen, said an estimated 81 per cent of American adults used a smartphone regularly, the number of users growing by more than 20 million in the past year.
Of the additional hour in media time Nielsen had measured this year, smartphone usage accounted for 37 minutes and tablets 12 minutes. Nielsen said online smartphone use averaged an hour and 39 minutes a day - more than double what it was two years ago.
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Liana Sayer, director of the Time Use Laboratory at the University of Maryland, said, "Young people text a lot, but they're not doing it at the expense of face-to-face contact. What I see that is more concerning is family members focusing on their phones and not sitting around the dinner table enjoying conversations."
Smartphone usage had grown so quickly there hadn't been much research into what kind an impact it was having on people's lives, Sayer said.
Nielsen said people were also spending three minutes less a day watching live television than they did a year ago, but they still spent four hours a day in front of the TV.
It said an ominous sign for television executives was that people aged 18 to 34 were spending more of their time each day online than they did watching live television, by a margin of 39 per cent of their media time to 29 per cent. People over 50 preferred TV by 53 to 21 per cent, Nielsen said.
Meanwhile, for the first time, it added, as many American homes subscribed to video services like Netflix or Hulu as there were homes with digital video recorders. Nearly 30 per cent of homes had both DVRs and a streaming service.
