40% of Tablet and Smartphone Owners Use Them While Watching TV
American consumers are increasingly connected and our recent survey shows they are increasingly multitasking when it comes to multimedia. — Roughly 40 percent of tablet and smartphone owners in the U.S. used their devices daily …
Context & Ripple Effects
This October 2013-era finding extends what Nielsen's own May 2011 survey already hinted at: tablets were being used in the living room alongside the TV, while eReaders stayed in the bedroom. What changed by October is the frequency claim — this isn't occasional novelty use, but roughly 40% of U.S. tablet and smartphone owners reporting daily simultaneous use.
The significance for the industry is that Nielsen, the company whose ratings underpin TV advertising pricing, is now measuring the second screen as part of the viewing session itself — an early signal that single-device audience measurement may not capture how people actually watch.
First-order effects
- TV advertisers and networks get hard numbers showing a large share of the audience's attention is split during commercial breaks, strengthening the case for interactive or synced ad formats over passive spots.
- Tablet makers gain a concrete usage argument for marketing the devices as living-room companions rather than standalone computers, reinforcing the 'TV buddy' positioning Nielsen flagged five months earlier.
Second-order effects
- App developers and social-TV startups have a quantified market to sell into: companion apps, check-in services, and synced content all depend on exactly the behavior this survey documents.
- Measurement rivals to Nielsen face pressure to build cross-device panels of their own, since advertisers will increasingly ask whether a 'viewer' was actually watching or browsing.
Third-order effects
- If simultaneous use keeps climbing from this 40% baseline, TV currency measurement drifts from set-tuning toward multi-device attention — a structural shift in how audiences are counted and priced.
- The living room consolidates as a two-screen ecosystem, with the phone or tablet becoming the default interaction layer for programming, discovery, and commerce around broadcast content.
The trend: Television viewing is becoming a two-screen activity, pulling audience measurement and ad formats toward synchronized second-device engagement.