Folks lie when they tel you how much media they use.
Not surprising, I suppose. The “right” answer is that we’re all reading books and taking walks and having community suppers, and such.
But the TRUE answer is that we are media hogs. See this article in Radio Business Report for details.
According to this study, a diary does a better job of tracking usage than a telephone study. That sounds right to me. But the article concludes that this somehow justifies the people-meter, which is a conclusion not quite supported by the data for radio at least. In fact, the “observed” radio usage (which means the REAL radio usage) was approximately the same as what was reported in the listening diary.
Still, it’s an interesting reminder that folks either have no idea how much media they use on a daily basis or they feel it’s so much that they lowball the number in surveys.