Screen time

In the Herald this week

New Zealanders are spending more time online than ever, with 50% of respondents spending four or more hours of their leisure time on the internet each day, according to a study commissioned by InternetNZ.

But that doesn’t necessarily mean doom-scrolling TikTok.

The result is partly because of the changing way that more traditional media is delivered.

Watching a couple of hours of TVNZ+ on the smart TV in your lounge or listening to Spotify during your commute counts towards your total.

That’s a nice start — giving the headline result and then contextualising it.  I was hoping then to see whether streaming more traditional media did in fact account for the increase. No more mention.

If we look at the report itself, there’s a good description of the survey: a sample of 1001 people, sampled and weighted to be representative of the subset of the NZ population who are online.  What does the report say about the increase?

Half of New Zealanders* (50%) spend four or more hours a day on the internet for personal
use.
This is a slight, but not statistically significant, rise from 2023 findings.

In 2023 the number was 46%, and a four percentage point change is relatively unimpressive compared to the sampling uncertainty.  The report doesn’t estimate how long we spend doing each activity on the internet, but the proportion of people who use the internet for streaming is about the same this year as last year or maybe slightly higher (42% vs 39%)

The report is generally interesting and useful, with the usual caveat that it’s self-reported — people may not be entirely accurate when you ask them how much time they spend online or how much they know about AI or whatever.