Co-Founder Amanda Gross-Tuft turned me on to this post about the phrase “Second Screen” in comparison to the data from a study on consumer behavior called "Media Multitasking Behavior: Concurrent Television and Computer Usage" (You know you are a Social TV nerd when…)
In a delightfully specific study on this topic called “Media Multitasking Behavior: Concurrent Television and Computer Usage” by S. Adam Brasel, Ph.D. and James Gips, Ph.D. of Boston College, we find this tidbit:
“People switched between media at an extreme rate, averaging more than 4 switches per min and 120 switches over the 27.5-minute study exposure. Participants had little insight into their switching activity and recalled their switching behavior at an average of only 12 percent of their actual switching rate revealed in the objective data. Younger individuals switched more often than older individuals, but other individual differences such as stated multitasking preference and polychronicity had little effect on switching patterns or gaze duration.”
First of all, we love the word polychronicity and plan to win at Scrabble with it one day. But the real insight here is that the so-called second screen is the one that typically holds the consumer’s focus. Mind you, they didn’t ask the participants if they were looking at the TV vs. their laptop—they used eye-tracking equipment to objectively measure the shift in focus. Survey says? The laptop logged more cumulative eyeball time than the TV.