Study: Radio Listening Drops 15%

Average American spends equal time online, watching TV

For the first time ever, the average American spends as much time online as watching TV offline -- about 13 hours a week, according to a report.

A story on latimes.com reports, that over the last five years, the amount of time spent watching TV has increased about 5%, but the time spent surfing the Web has grown 121%, Forrester Research said in an annual report about online consumer habits. Click here for the report.

The growth in Web consumption has been fueled by a number of factors, among the most popular being e-mail.

About 92% of people use e-mail and about 60% of people shop online, Forrester said in its report. Three years ago, only about a third of people went to the Web to shop, the report said.

Nearly half of all Americans use the Web to share photos with friends and family, Forrester said.
And about 35% of people in the U.S. use social networking websites, up from 17% three years ago, the report said.

But doing more online means doing less offline.

Over the last five years, listening to radio over the airwaves has decreased 15%. During that same period, reading print newspapers has dropped 26% and reading printed-on-paper magazines has fallen 18%, according to the report.

Read more here.