If You Watch TV, Chat, and Tweet at the Same Time, Know that You’re Not Alone

Many Americans just spent several hours on Sunday night watching the healthcare bill debate on TV while simultaneously chatting, making forum posts, or Tweeting about it, reports Artstechnica.com.

According to the latest Three Screen report out of Nielsen, Americans in general now spend 35 percent more time using the internet and TV at the same time than a year ago.

That translates to about 3.5 hours of overlapping TV/internet time per month for the average American consumer, according to Nielsen's data from the fourth quarter of 2009. Nearly 59 percent of consumers reported doing this at least once a month as well, up from 57.5 percent in 2008.

That's a lot of people spreading their attention across multiple screens, which is why so many shows are beginning to advertise live online polls, chats, and more during the course of broadcast. People aren't just hitting up those websites after the show is over — they're hitting them up as the show is going on.

These numbers don't count those who are watching TV on the internet itself, though. Online video consumption is up 16 percent year over year, with close to half (44 percent) of all online video being consumed at the workplace.

Despite this, the firm notes that most Americans are still only using online video to catch up with regular programming or if the TV is unavailable for whatever reason.

"It is not typically a replacement for TV viewing," Nielsen wrote in its report. This much is obvious from the numbers: Americans spend an average of almost 35 hours per month in front of the TV and another 2 hours watching timeshifted TV from a DVR.
Watching video on the Internet by itself only accounted for an average of 22 minutes per month, with the 25-34 age group watching the most.

These trends have been reflected in past reports from Nielsen, which made the same observation nearly a year ago that the majority of all video is still consumed on the TV.

People's overall media consumption continues to go up, however—it's easier than ever today to be online and watching TV at the same time, and perhaps even watching video on both.

After all, it's not unheard of to have a movie going on in the background while you surf the web and check out some YouTube clips—or at least it is for some of us.