Time spent with digital media is still climbing, but mainly in tandem with declining traditional media

US adults will spend 12:42 per day with media in 2025, a scant 2 minutes more than last year.That equates to just 0.3% growth. Next year, the increase will be even smaller. The competition for US consumer attention will be zero-sum going forward.

Time spent with digital media will increase by 11.6 minutes this year (2.4% growth), but traditional’s loss of 9.5 minutes will mostly offset that gain. While still positive, digital media’s growth rates are now at historic lows. Emerging challengers will face an unprecedented time crunch among potential viewers, listeners, and users in the coming years.

Complicating the battle for attention, a significant portion of time spent with media occurs during multiscreen multitasking. Most adults will not actually spend over 12 hours of their day consuming media. Rather, the subset of time when they’re consuming two (or even three) types of media simultaneously adds up quickly under our methodology. In 2025, nearly 210 million US adults will be second-screen users, per our forecast. Media time is not only reaching saturation—in many cases, it is already double-saturated.

Read the full report, US Time Spent With Media 2025.