The average global consumer spent 8.24 hours per day with media in 2025, up from 7.62 hours in 2020, as ad-supported media accounted for 52.7% of time spent in 2025, down from a 55.5% share in 2020.
Those are some of the top-line findings from PQ Media’s just-released 13th annual edition of the Global Consumer Media Usage Forecast 2026-2030.
In the U.S., media usage was more than 11 hours per day. This lags Japan, where daily media usage exceeded 13 hours, and the Netherlands, where it was more than 12 hours.
Meanwhile, consumer-driven media usage exceeds 50.1% in the U.S. It led by Spain, at 58.6%.
The other takeaway that’s worth noting is the great global age disparity between those older than 80 years of age (averaging 102.2 hours per week spent on media) and “the newly born ai-Gens” (averaging just 6.3 hours per week with media) seen in 2025.
Television — including live, digital, streaming and over-the-top (OTT) video — remains the most used of the 11 media platforms that PQ Media tracks, reaching 27.74 hours per week in 2025.
