South Africans are slaves to their screens.
A recent study conducted by data analysts at Electronics Hub, revealed that South African citizens spend an average of 24.67 percent of their waking day in front of the TV.
The findings place South Africa at number 2 in the world, just behind the US whose people spend 28.35 percent of their time glued to the small screen.
Brazil, UK, Chile, Norway, Mexico, France, Romania and Turkey made up the top ten respectively.
Pedro Ferreira of the Carnegie Mellon University attributes the stats to subscription platforms that promote binge-watching.
He said, “When one episode ends, the next one automatically starts. Also, the way these stories are written makes them better consumed in this manner. The storytellers take into account that you’re not going to watch one episode per week, you’re going to watch several back-to-back.”
The study also revealed that children are exposed to over three hours of screen time outside of school, and that they tend to watch more television if they live in neighbourhoods known to be dangerous.
When looking at overall screen time, which includes all devices like cellphones, computers, tablets etc, South Africans ranked first in the world, spending an average of 56.80% (9 hours and 24 minute) of their waking day looking at a screen.
Compared to last year’s finding, the average person globally spends three minutes more looking at their screens per day.
Brazil ranked 2nd, while Philippines, Columbia and Argentina where 3rd, 4th and 5th, respectively.
South Africa came out on top again for the most time spent on social media, with the average citizen spending 22.26% of their waking hours scrolling through the Instagram, TikTok and Facebook.
Sophia Petrillo of the Brown Undergraduate Journal of Public Health, said certain apps are fine-tuned to be perfect time-sinkers.
“The infinite scroll and variable reward pattern of TikTok likely increase the addictive quality of the app as they may induce a flow-like state for users that is characterized by a high degree of focus and productivity at the task at hand.
“Once immersed in the flow-like state, users may experience a distorted sense of time in which they do not realize how much time has passed.”