Multiple Screens and How We Use Them

When I was a kid, “screen time” meant huddling with my parents around the television set to watch a show everyone could agree on. If the reception got fuzzy, I had the designated job of getting up to adjust the antennae.

Sure, go ahead and laugh. It was only the 1980s, but honestly, the idea of a single-screen household now seems so antiquated that it may as well have been the 1950s!

Screen usage is on the rise, and that’s no surprise. After all, not only do have more devices than ever before, they’re more available to people across the globe than ever before. And what’s more, we often use them simultaneously — for example, scrolling through social feeds on our phones or shopping on our tablets while the TV is on.

Consumer behavior around screens has evolved so drastically in the past few years that it can be hard to wrap your brain around it. Which is why this infographic on multiscreen usage caught my eye. Not only does it break down usage by device, it introduces the concepts of device meshing (i.e., using multiple device to enhance viewing) versus device stacking  (i.e., using multiple devices to conduct unrelated tasks).

The typical multiscreen users consumes nearly seven hours of screen media every day. For marketers, knowing when, why, and how consumers are using screens helps you better connect with them.

Read on for the full infographic. Then tell me: do you stack, or do you mesh?