We're Still Measuring Media Influence Like It's 2005

Last week I spent an average of 6 hours 8 minutes a day with my phone screen open.

How about you? I bet there’s a social media app at the top of your Most Used list.

And yet we’re still measuring media influence like it’s 2005.

2.5 hours a day on social media.

60 seconds per visit on news websites.

We're comparing these like they're the same thing.

Traditional techniques to discover how people consume media usually involve asking them questions like 'Which of these media have you read or watched in the last week'?

As social media emerged many of these platforms were simply put side by side with traditional media organisations.

This was helpful for telling us how many people look at different platforms but it totally obscures the bigger picture.

Here are three numbers that reveal what we're missing:

The average news website visit during the 2024 UK election was just over 1 minute.

The average social media user spends 2.5 hours a day on social media.

Young people spend 3x longer watching YouTube each day than broadcast TV. Less than half of under-24s watch broadcast TV at all.

During a major election - peak interest in news - people spent barely 60 seconds per visit on news websites. Meanwhile, they're spending 150 minutes daily on social platforms.

How often somebody views a news source is a very one-dimensional way of understanding the influence of that source. Here's why:

Time spent.
The Guardian might appear as influential as X when you look at two bar charts side by side - but if you were able to measure time spent you'd get a very different picture. We're comparing one minute of attention to hours of daily engagement.

What people actually see.
Acknowledging the use of a social media platform tells us nothing about which sources of information somebody actually receives through that platform because we all have different algorithmically composed newsfeeds.

The incomparable scale of video platforms.
Even when thinking about TV - which still has a respectable audience - it's impossible to compare overall viewing time on YouTube with BBC or GB news. YouTube viewing time alone is three times higher for younger audiences, and less than half of under-24s watch broadcast TV at all.

The shift is already here. We're just not measuring it properly.

And in that unmeasured shift is a move to a less regulated, less trustworthy and less healthy public conversation.

Without wider acknowledgement of this shift, too many organisations are clinging to old mental models of media and what it means to have an impact through communication.

We need more multi-dimensional research into media consumption - not just what people look at but what they see and how much time they spend online.

Until then, we're making communication decisions based on a map of a world that no longer exists.