Internet is Hongkongers' most used form of media: survey
Hongkongers spend longer on the internet each day than they do using any other type of media, a study has found.
The average time was 145 minutes. That compares with 138 minutes spent watching television, and 129 minutes on mobile phones, including conversations and using other applications.
That’s according to a survey conducted by Ipsos in which 6,090 people were polled between April 2012 and March this year.
Of those aged between 12 and 64, 89 per cent of the respondents said they had watched television the day before the survey.
The proportion was 69 per cent for the internet, 67 per cent for print newspapers, and 66 per cent for using internet on a mobile device.
In the younger category, those aged between 12 and 39, average internet and television use was the same, at 88 per cent.
That compares with 83 per cent for using the internet on mobile devices and 59 per cent for print newspapers.
The survey also found that 42 per cent of people aged from 12 to 39 consider the internet an indispensable part of their lives.
But in the older group, 31 per cent said mobile phones were their most indispensable technology.
“The internet has certainly become mainstream … and as people’s mobility increases, accessing the internet on the road is becoming increasingly popular,” said Clare Lui, executive director of Ipsos, adding that the younger generation was more active in using internet across platforms.
According to another study by Ipsos commissioned by YouTube, 75 per cent of those in the younger age group visit the video-sharing website at least once every week and spend 3.6 hours on average browsing it, while 25 per cent visit it on a daily basis.
YouTube is accessed by one billion visitors from all around the world each month and more than six billion hours of videos are watched every month.
Stella Cheung Man-sze, sales director of Google Hong Kong, said the TrueView Video Ads Tool launched last year – which allows audiences to skip advertising messages on videos – has encouraged more people to start watching. “This freedom of choice is given to our audiences, and they can choose to watch the ads or not. We’ve found that this can reduce the number of viewers who opt not to watch the video because of the ads by 40 per cent,” Cheung said.
Launched in 2005, YouTube is a subsidiary of Google and is based in California.
