Social media wooing away time spent on newspaper reading, TV viewing: ASSOCHAM

The time spent on newspaper reading is about half , especially among the youngsters. 

Wider interaction with at least 235 families in major cities including Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Hyderabad, Pune, Bengaluru threw up some interesting findings.

Almost 80 per cent of the respondents said,  the morning tea session with newspaper(s) has undergone a sea change. 

While the men folk , mostly well past 50 , would stick to the newspapers, the younger members of the families , are seen surfing their WhatsApp groups and other interactive platforms, which have a huge variety of tastes and information.

“Ironically, some of the unverified stuff passes as truth which remains an area of concern.

However, as the new media evolves into maturity, hopefully, the users would become much more discerning in the way they would consume the information from the Internet”, said ASSOCHAM Secretary General D S Rawat. 

While the newspapers print order is something of the order of 62 million and the TV viewership is a huge at 780 million, a lot of traffic, especially from television content would be shifting to hand held devices with the likes of YouTubes, Netflix and Amazon going all out to channelise on the youthful nation.

Facebook, which claims the lion’s share of the social media traffic, has a user base of 200 million in India itself. This is about 10 per cent of the FB’s worldwide subscriber base of two billion.

Though India’s internet penetration is relatively low between 40-45 per cent, whereas the tele-density is over 90 per cent, the initiatives like Bharat Net that is fast expanding the broad band network in the countryside, the digital India would see much more and speedier expansion of the social media, catering to different tastes of news, views, leisure, governance and social inter-face.

“Along with the changes in the newspaper readings, the television viewing habits are visibly changing. We do not see in most families glued together, watching TV at prime time.  Different members of the family are viewing different things, with young lots and most of the ladies, busy with their videos on their WhatsApp groups, FB   and Instagram posts. “

Accordingly, the marketing strategists are changing their tracks and are focusing on digital advertising and marketing, with the help of some useful analytics which guide their message to the target groups. “The medium would witness lot of evolution and new technologies would be driving the growth, reaching the unchartered frontiers”, the paper said. 

Realising the importance and reach of the Internet platforms, majority of the newspapers have gone digital and individual articles and stories are being circulated on the social media.