A Survey of Modern Life: Entertainment
How Entertainment Services Influence Our Behavior
This report is the second in a series of reports on the results from a set of consumer surveys on health-related behaviors and the influence of popular products and services. Fielded by Building H, a project to build health into everyday life, the surveys examined the influences of popular products and services — such as video streaming, food delivery services, automobiles, rideshare services, mapping services and mobile gaming — on these behaviors, finding that they are often negative. This report is based on surveys specifically covering the use of video streaming services and mobile gaming, along with general surveys on health behaviors and attitudes. The report was written by Carlo Martinez and edited by Steve Downs. More information on the survey project can be found here.
Key Findings
- 40.6% of U.S. adults feel that amount of time they spend looking at screens negatively affects their health;
- 40.7% of users of video streaming services report watching at least two hours of streamed video content daily, with 11.3% reported watching four hours daily;
- 54.7% of video streaming users and 50.9% of mobile game players reported losing sleep at least one night a week due to their use of these services;
- 59.6% of U.S. adults spend at least three hours looking at screens for personal use daily, with 10.3% spending more than 10 hours on screens daily.
Introduction
Building H developed a set of 10 surveys of American adults that looked at the prevalence of five important health-related behaviors and one potentially unhealthy behavior, use of selected consumer products and services, and attitudes toward corporate responsibility for health impacts.
Questions across two general surveys asked about sleep, physical activity, spending time with friends, getting outdoors, screen time and eating patterns. Additional surveys assessed the impact of different types of products and services — video streaming, mobile gaming, ride-hailing, food and grocery delivery services — on different health behaviors. The surveys on video streaming and mobile gaming are the focus of this report; additional data are drawn from the general surveys.
The surveys were conducted using Google Consumer Surveys in December, 2020. Sample sizes varied from 500 adults (18 years or older) in the U.S. for the video streaming survey to 700 for the survey on mobile gaming to 5,000 respondents for the general surveys. Samples were chosen to represent the U.S. population distribution across ages, genders, races, and geographic regions.
General surveys questioned participants on both their experiences with and attitudes towards health behaviors (i.e. sleep, socialization, time spent outdoors, eating patterns and physical activity). The product specific surveys questioned participants who use specific products like video streaming or mobile gaming on how they interact with the products, and the products’ effects on health behaviors. For example, both the streaming and mobile game surveys asked participants how much time they spent with the products in the last month, how much sleep they have lost in the past month due to the products and how often they socialize with others while using the products.
Results
Screen Time
- 59.5% of participants report at least three hours of daily personal screen time, with 10.3% report at least ten hours daily.
- 46.7% of participants feel that their screen usage does not impact their health, 40.6% feel that screen usage has a negative impact on their health and 12.6% feel that screen usage has a positive effect on their health.
Video Streaming Services
- 40.7% of users of video streaming services report watching at least two hours of streamed video content daily; 11.3% report watching four hours daily.
- 40% of participants reported using a streaming service like Netflix or Hulu at least 20 days in the past month.
- Women (62.6%) were 1.67 times more likely to stream two hours a day than men (37.4%), and 2.3 times more likely to stream over four hours a day (69.7% to 30.3%).
- Women (59.5%) were 1.47 times more likely to use streaming services with friends or family than men (40.5%), who were more likely to watch alone.
- 15% of participants eat at least one meal a day while streaming video content, with those who ate meals while streaming more likely to also snack while streaming.
- 57% of those who ate meals while streaming reported that their meals were homemade at least 75% of the time.
- 54.7% of participants reported losing sleep at least one night a week due to streaming TV. 36.1% reported two or more nights of affected sleep and 14.5% reported losing sleep four or more nights per week. In one of the general surveys, 20.9% of participants reported staying up late watching TV (not necessarily streaming video) as a reason for getting less sleep.
Mobile Gaming
- 32.1% of survey participants who play mobile games play games at least four days a week, with a third of these users reporting playing for two hours or more at a time.
- 49.1% of mobile game users don’t get any less sleep because of the games, while 22.3% lost some sleep two or more nights per week and 11.1% lost sleep at least four nights a week.
- 50.5% of participants rarely or never play augmented reality mobile games with others, while 12.2% always play with others.
- 20.4% of users reported making at least one friend within the past year through mobile games. 18% of users reported meeting 10 or more people over the past year through game play.
Product Usage
People spend a significant amount of time in front of screens, with 59.5% of participants reporting at least three hours of daily screen time, 21.8% reporting at least seven and 10.3% reporting 10 or more. Increased screen time was generally associated with decreases in physical activity and outdoor time.
Some users spent considerable time on both mobile games and streaming services, with 32.1% reporting playing AR mobile games at least four times a week and 40% reporting using video streaming services at least 20 days within the past month. While 46% of participants reported playing mobile games for less than 30 minutes at a time, 32.4% of those who played four or more times a week reported playing for two hours or more at a time. 40.7% reported streaming at least two hours daily and 11.3% stream at least four hours a day.
Social Aspects
Only 36.1% of streaming users reported watching with others at least 75% of the time, 26.6% reported sometimes watching with others and 37.3% reported watching with others less than 25% of the time. Women were 1.47 times more likely to stream content with others than men.
In the mobile gaming survey, 50.5% of participants reported rarely or never playing with others while 12.2% reported always playing with others. 49.8% of participants had not met someone through the AR mobile games within the past year, 19.2% met one to five people, 13% met six to nine and 18% met 10 or more, with time spent playing with others positively correlated with number of people met through the games. 55.7% of players reported not making any new friends within the past year through the games, 23.9% said they were not sure and 20.4% reported making at least one friend. However, increased time spent playing with others and increased number of people met through the games were not strongly associated with making a friend through the game.
Discussion
Our surveys sought to understand consumers’ health-related behaviors, their use of products and services and the impact of these on health-related behaviors, and attitudes toward corporate responsibility for health impacts.
A survey targeted streaming services since they have quickly emerged as an alternative to traditional TV, which has historically been the most common way for Americans to spend their leisure time. Since TV is most often watched while sitting or laying down, it is associated with an increase in physical inactivity — a risk factor for type II diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular disease, anxiety and depression.
Other behaviors linked to TV usage include increased eating, social isolation and poor sleep quality. It is worrying that such negative health behaviors and outcomes are associated with an activity that is so common in our society. Streaming television differs from traditional television is some respects: viewing is asynchronous or “on demand,” so one actively chooses to watch a show rather than selecting among shows currently being broadcast; it also introduces the idea of “binge-watching” by providing access to multiple sequential program episodes, twenty-four hours a day. Building H wanted to see what behaviors were being encouraged or facilitated through streaming products, such as Netflix and Hulu.
First we wanted to see how much people were actually streaming. Other research has shown that during the COVID-19 pandemic, streaming accounted for 25% of total TV usage and the average adult watched a little over four hours of traditional TV daily. This amounts to an average of around an hour a day, which matches the participant’s median daily usage of over one hour but less than two.
For almost half of participants, streaming video has become a near daily activity, with 40% reporting watching content on a streaming service at least 20 days in the past month. A similar amount of participants also stream video for at least two hours daily, with 11% watching at least four hours daily.
While there were no statistically significant differences between racial categories, we did find a few differences between sexes. Women make up a narrow majority of Netflix users and survey participants, they were also more likely to spend over two hours streaming content daily, to stream content on 20 or more days within the past and to stream content with others. While the usage stats can be disquieting, if streaming television is used as a social activity, then risks of social isolation, anxiety and depression could be alleviated.
We wanted to track behaviors associated with augmented reality (AR) mobile games, such as Pokémon GO, because of their ability to get users physically active while engaging with the product. AR mobile games are apps for smartphones that track users movement to allow them to interact with in-game characters and real world players. Pokémon GO, the most popular of the AR games, launched in 2016, quickly garnering nearly 30 million daily active users and reaching 1 billion downloads by March 2019.
By connecting real world landmarks to in-game achievements and characters, Pokémon GO is able to get users to both engage in physical activity and interact with other players, features not integral to other video gaming models. For example, an event in San Jose allowed the 130,000 participants who showed up to travel over seven miles to interact with in-game characters.
Pokémon GO and other AR games are examples of consumer products that can both make a profit and promote healthy behaviors. Accordingly, we were interested to see what behaviors were facilitated by the apps and whether any patterns emerge.
Use of AR mobile games is still relatively uncommon, and even among those who do play, many play infrequently. Only 4.4% of people who were initially reached out to reported playing an AR game within the past month, with 2.9% claiming Pokémon GO. Respondents were split fairly evenly between playing less than one hour a week (29.8%), playing one to three hours a week (38%) and playing at least four hours a week (32.1%). Nearly half (46%) of respondents reported playing for less than 30 minutes at a time, while only 19.7% reported playing for two hours or more at a time. Players who played at least four hours a week were much more likely to play for two hours or more in one game session.
Around half (49.1%) of participants reported never losing sleep because of AR games, and only 11.1% lost sleep on four more days a week. However, those who played at least four days a week and spent more than two hours on the game per session were more likely to report missing at losing sleep at least four days a week. There was no difference between genders in frequency or game length, but non-white players were more likely to play longer than white players.
Since in-game occurrences can be affected by real-world interactions, AR games present opportunities for companies to build socializability into their products. However, results from our surveys were mixed; more than half of respondents (50.5%) reported never or rarely playing games with others, while only 22.2% reported usually or always playing with others. 55.7% reported not making any new friends through the game within the past year, while 23.9% were unsure. Around half of participants (49.8%) reported not meeting anyone through the games within the past year; although 18% reported meeting at least 10 people through AR games within the past year, which is promising. Non-white participants were more likely to report having met people through the games when compared to white participants.
Conclusion
The surveys helped inform how consumers use products, and behaviors that occur or are enabled through product usage. Both video streaming services and AR mobile gaming are linked quite explicitly with loss of sleep, which, given the increasing research on the harmful effects of short sleep, is a serious concern. While mobile gaming facilitates physical activity and outdoor time by its very nature, video streaming is for the most part a sedentary and indoor activity and thus to the degree that it adds to total video consumption, it adds to concerns about sedentary, indoor lifetstyles. Both types of services can be used socially; thus there are opportunities to facilitate more social usage. “Screen time” is a broad concept and can encompass many beneficial, as well as harmful, experiences, but the self-reported concerns about it (participants were three times more likely to identify it as a negative influence on health than a positive) and the total time spent on it merit continued concern as well as research to unpack the concept.
The high-level results raise many questions and point to opportunities to dig deeper. Streaming represents just one form of watching video content. Further research could focus on how much traditional TV users of video streaming services watch in addition to time spent on streaming services. This information is needed to measure total TV consumption time as well as to determine how much of TV is now consumed through streaming services and if it differs by gender, race or age.
Some streaming services (and third-party companies) have begin to offer synchronized viewing among multiple users — a distributed watch party, in effect. Determining how many streaming service consumers use party services and how often can help inform how much socializing is occurring through these platforms. This information can be supplemented with information on who, if anybody, consumers use the service with. Information across platforms can be analyzed to see if any streaming service is doing better in promoting social aspects of TV consumption than other companies.
Future research into AR gaming apps can focus on qualitative reasons for the difference observed between white and non-white participants in time spent gaming and the amount of people met through the game apps. Our surveys did not question participants on the distance they have walked or run because of the games, which can help determine how much exercise they are actually getting participants to engage in. Consumer baseline exercise levels should be taken into consideration in order to ascertain how much exercise is being directly facilitated by the games.
Qualitative data on why consumers meet others through the game or not could help inform how to facilitate improved and more frequent social interactions through the games. While increased game time could lead to increased physical activity and socialization, it is worrying that consumers who use the app more often are more likely to report losing sleep because of the app at least four days a week. Further research could establish why consumers are losing sleep because of the games; are the games actively incentivizing people to play late at night or are consumers playing at night because that is the only part of the day when they have time?
Acknowledgments
Thomas Goetz, Sara Singer, Carlo Martinez and Brittany Sigler all contributed to the conceptualization and development of the surveys; Carlo Martinez contributed data analysis.
