US households spend equal amount of time online and watching TV

A new report shows that the average US household is spending as much time online as they are watching the TV.

According to Forrester’s survey ‘Understanding the changing needs of the US online consumer 2010’, the average household views 13 hours of traditional broadcast TV a week in the US, which is the same amount of time they spent surfing the net.

As before, people aged 18 to 30 spent equal or more time on the internet, although this is the first time people in the 31 to 44 age group also followed the trend, a MediaPost article says.

Apparently, consumers aged between 45 and 54 also spend an equal amount of time watching the TV and online, with internet use growing 121% since 2005 (while TV viewing has remained constant over the past five years).

Other findings show that mobile users texting on a monthly basis increased from 54% to 61% – including a number of older users.  Also, globally, one quarter of online mobile users connect to the interent from their handset.  Around 200 million users now access Facebook via their mobile device, according to Forrester.

However, the biggest jump in adoption since 2007 is social networking. The research shows that 62 million US adults connect via a social network.