Study: More Time Spent Surfing than Reading Newspapers

Related to yesterday’s post about the rise of Internet ad spending, Reuters is reporting that U.S. consumers this year will spend more of their day surfing the Internet than reading newspapers or going to the movies or listening to recorded music, according to the VSS study released yesterday.

In the Reuters article, James Rutherfurd, managing director at VSS, pointed to a potentially worrisome development for the media industry — “the overall time spent with media declined slightly last year, a spillover effect of the consumer shift away from newspapers and other traditional sources of news and entertainment.”

As more people flock to the Web, many will want to continue that experience away from their PCs. Since today’s new cellphones are powerful enough to deliver at least a passable (if not stellar) experience browsing the Web, these changes in media consumption will eventually be reflected on the mobile side as well.

More time spent on Web than newspapers: study [Reuters via Yahoo!]