Are Young People Watching Less TV? (Updated)

[Editor's Note: This is the latest quarterly update to this article, this time containing Q4 2012 data and trend analysis.] There’s a strong perception that with the rise of social media, mobile device usage, and other such digital trends, youth have put TV on mute. According to the most recent cross-platform report [download page] from Nielsen, TV consumption is dropping by a larger amount every quarter, but it’s still not a seismic shift. The 18-24 group, for instance, watched a weekly average of about 23 and a quarter hours of traditional TV in Q4 2012, about 2 hours and 20 minutes less than they did in Q4 2011. That’s about 20 minutes less per day. (more…)