British ‘spend half their waking hours using media technology’

BRITISH consumers are spending almost half their waking hours watching TV and using their mobiles and other communications gadgets, a study has found.

The research by regulator Ofcom — the first to track exactly how long consumers spend using various media — found the average person spends 45% of their time awake absorbing media or communicating via gadgets.

They are sending four times as many texts a day than in 2004 and spending almost a quarter of their time on the internet on social networking sites.