Nearly three quarters of Canadian Anglophones (74%) admit to multi-tasking online while watching TV – up from 66% a year ago, and three times the number of people engaged in the practice a decade ago.
The new report from Media Technology Monitor (MTM) identified 38% of Anglophones as “heavy” multi-taskers who are always or often online when watching TV.
These heavy multi-taskers tend to be younger and have a higher household income; the report also identified heavy sports users as avid multi-taskers.
Only 16% of the 4,002 Anglophones age 18+ who participated in the study said they never go online when watching TV.
The smartphone is the most common device used for multi-tasking, with 67% of heavy multi-taskers saying they use it to connect to the internet, ahead of computers (53%) and tablets (41%).
Email, web surfing and social networking are the most common multi-tasking activities. The report said more than 20% of heavy multi-taskers watch online video while watching TV, with more than a third researching products seen in commercials.
MTM also identified households with teens as being more likely to research products featured in TV commercials, along with those owning tablets and/or smart TVs.
Not surprisingly, social networks lend themselves to multi-tasking. Twitter is the most popular of the major social networking sites, with 65% of its users identifying themselves as heavy multi-taskers (compared with 47% for Facebook).
Among heavy multi-taskers, 86% said they send or receive email, while 82% browse the web and 72% visit social networking sites. More than half (56%) of all heavy multi-taskers look up information about a TV show, while nearly a quarter (22%) watch other TV or video content online.
Heavy multi-taskers spend approximately 28 hours per week online, 10 more hours per week than people who said they rarely or only sometimes multi-task.
