Young Indians Watches More Internet, Less TV


Bangalore:  Television is one of the major pass-time in all homes, but this trend is changing slowly as the younger generation is spending more time on internet than television. Internet is penetrating more into Indian veins and its impacting the way Indian youths likes to spend their leisure time.

Some very interesting facts about the leisure habits of 12-24-year-olds was revealed by one of Technopak's recent studies- India Consumer Trends which states that even though watching television is the most prominent among leisure activities for the youth, taking up close to three hours every day, but its importance is reducing as gaming, Internet browsing and other 'my time' entertainment options become popular.

56 per cent of Indian youth spend more than two hours on the internet during the weekday as against just 44 per cent of them spending even more than one hour watching television. The engagement with internet further increases on weekends with 69 per cent youngsters spending more than two hours as compared to 35 per cent spending more than three hours watching television, according to an online survey done by ViziSense on 500 young internet users.

Urban way of living, penetration of social networking sites like Facebook which fulfills the socializing attribute and the entertainment through online games are making youth to sit in front of their PC. The research further said that youngsters prefer to visit Facebook and social media pages of companies rather than their websites for information and products offerings. The usage of internet by youngsters further extends to mobile with 50 per cent of them accessing the web daily through their mobile phones.

Amit Bhartiya, GM, ViziSense, said “Online is now entrenched in the daily lives of youth in India, more than any other medium. They show high dependence on the use of the Internet for almost all their commerce, entertainment and other content consumption and this should only reinforce the importance of this medium for marketers. The other strong message that came out through the research is that youth prefer online to other media is because it facilitates two-way interaction and engagement with brands and companies vs. any other media.”