The traditional living room has been transformed into a digital media hub where the household watches television while multi-tasking via tablets and smartphones, according to a report.
Households are increasingly reverting to just one television, and 91 per cent of adults tune in to the main set in the living room at least once a week, up from 88 per cent in 2002, according to Ofcom’s annual ‘state of the nation’ report.
But more than half of viewers (53 per cent) regularly multi-task by streaming videos, sending instant messages and updating their social media status following a “huge growth” in tablet and smartphone ownership.
A quarter of viewers (25 per cent) are regularly “media meshing” – using devices to communicate about the programme they are watching – while 49 per cent engage in “media stacking” to carry out completely unrelated activities such as social networking or online shopping.
Ofcom said media meshing was seen during this year’s Wimbledon men’s tennis final, when 1.1 million people worldwide tweeted 2.6 million times using associated hashtags.
These activities are mostly carried out on smartphones, with over half of adults (51 per cent) now owning the devices, up from 27 per cent two years ago.
Tablet ownership has more than doubled in the past year, increasing from 11 per cent of households to 24 per cent.
The majority of parents with a tablet (91 per cent) say their children use it or have one of their own.
The average household now owns more than three types of internet-enabled device, with one in five owning six or more, the communications regulator said.
The study found the number of households with just one television has increased from 35 per cent in 2002 to 41 per cent in 2012, with the number of five to 15-year-olds with a television in their bedroom dropping from 69 per cent in 2007 to 52 per cent in the first quarter of this year.
Live television accounted for 90 per cent of all viewing in 2012, with the average viewer watching just over four hours a day – 15 minutes more than in 2008.
Viewers are also using bigger screens in the living room, with “jumbo” sets measuring 43 inches or more accounting for 15.8 per cent of sales in the first quarter of this year, up 4.3 per cent on 2012.
Ofcom’s director of research, James Thickett, said: “Our research shows that increasingly families are gathering in the living room to watch TV just as they were in the 1950s – but now delivered on bigger, wider and more sophisticated sets.
“Unlike the 1950s family, however, they are also doing their own thing. They are tweeting about a TV show, surfing the net or watching different content altogether on a tablet.
“Just a few years ago, we would be talking about last night’s TV at work or at school. Now, we’re having those conversations live while watching TV – using social media, text and instant messaging.”
The report also reveals that internet-based forms of communication such as e-mail, instant messaging and social networking are now more popular than texting among younger people, with 84 per cent of 16 to 24-year-olds using at least one of these methods on a weekly basis compared with 80 per cent who text.
More using internet to stream films
Some 80 per cent of UK adults have access to the internet at home, with men aged between 25 and 34 spending the most time browsing online, the Ofcom report reveals.
Laptop and desktop internet users spend at least 35 hours online each month, while men aged from 25 to 34 spend an average of 47 hours and 42 minutes.
Superfast broadband is now available to almost three-quarters of UK premises, with subscribers doubling from 1.9 million to 3.8 million in the nine months to March 2013.
The most notable way users said it had changed their internet use was to increase the amount of TV programmes and full-length films they were streaming.
Furthermore, more than half of superfast broadband users say they now work at home more than they used to.
This year, almost eight in 10 (79 per cent) of superfast broadband users said the download speeds provided by their service had met or exceeded their expectations.
The use of mobile phones to access the internet grew faster in Scotland than in any other UK nation over the last year, rising 13 per cent to 44 per cent.
Elsewhere, Northern Ireland has the highest tablet computer ownership in the UK with the proportion of households owning such a device more than trebling in the past year. Three in ten homes (29 per cent) now own one, compared with 24 per cent in the UK.
Nearly a quarter of homes in Wales are shunning the traditional landline and using only mobile phones to make and receive calls at home.
Some 23 per cent of households in Wales are mobile-only, significantly more than the UK average of 15 per cent.