STUDY: TV Viewers Aren't All That Social

No, we’re not talking about the Twitter deluge bemoaning last night’s HBO GO failure. (But please, no Game of Thrones premier spoilers. We fell asleep waiting for it to load.)

Despite all the talk of social media as a new way to measure success on TV, the vast majority of viewers don’t use social while watching–and most of those who do aren’t watching very closely.

Yet two competing studies on the topic show us that the future of the medium is-surprise–hardly set in stone.

First, a late 2013 “Talking Social TV 2” survey by the Council for Research Excellence and Keller Fay Group found that:

• Just over 16% of Americans use social while watching TV, be it live or “time-shifted”
• Only 8.3%