Googling, goggling

A US survey has suggested that internet browsing is not reducing people's TV viewing – they're just doing them both at once. But is simultaneous media consumption good for sanity? KEVIN COURTNEYfinds out

I'M WATCHING Rhod Gilbert's Work Experienceon BBC2 while trawling through YouTube in search of the Lady GaGa video everyone's talking about. The Gotan Project's new album is streaming on my laptop and Donal Dineen is playing a new Efterklang tune on the radio. The Guardian'smedia supplement lies open on the table to my left, and the Word is propped up on my right. Behind me, the baby monitor relays the tiniest sounds made by my sleeping infant, and my mobile chirrups with a cacophony of tweets.

I’m getting a headache – is there a universal off switch? Can I get off this technological treadmill? When a sexy new medium arrives on the scene, most people assume it’s going to knock the previous one out. The Kindle will spark a mass book-burning, and MP3s will send vinyl into meltdown. And the web will consign that goggle box to a dusty corner.

But a survey this week suggests that, just because something is new and bright and shiny, doesn’t mean people will ditch the old model. They’ll simply move it slightly to one side to make room for the new arrival. The survey by Neilsen, the company that tracks TV viewing in the US, has found that more Americans are watching TV while surfing the web – far from signalling closedown for traditional TV, the internet is emerging as a complementary activity.

According to Neilsen, during the last quarter of 2009, simultaneous web/TV usage went up by 35 per cent, with nearly 60 per cent of TV viewers happy to surf the net while watching their favourite TV show. “The initial fear was that internet and mobile video and entertainment would slowly cannibalise traditional TV viewing, but the steady trend of increased TV viewership alongside expanded simultaneous usage argues something quite different,” says Matt O’Grady of Nielsen.

One of my favourite movie scenes when I was a teenager was from The Man Who Fell To Earth, the bit where Bowie the alien is watching a bank's 15 TV sets, all tuned to different channels. As a typical bloke who can't concentrate on more than one thing, I was in awe of this multi-tasker from space.

But does using multiple media at the same time really mark us out as highly evolved? It seems the more tech stuff we get, the farther our attention spans seem to regress – we can’t even hold a real-life conversation without constantly checking our mobile phones. Within five minutes, I’ve lost track of what’s happening on the TV. And I seem to have stumbled down some disused back-road of the information superhighway, where everything looks like Geocities, circa 1995.

Another problem with simultaneous web/TV viewing is that I need glasses to look at my computer, but not to watch the TV. So I’m clicking with one hand, channel-hopping with the other, and trying to flick my specs with my elbow. Good thing my phone is on hands-free, ’cos I haven’t got any hands free. The Bubble comes on the TV. It’s a quiz show in which contestants are shut away from all news for a week. Where do I sign up?

If I thought using various media simultaneously was a juggling act, try adding an inquisitive toddler into the mix. But then, inspiration hits. I put a Bob the Builder DVD on the telly, log on to the Bob the Builder website, pull up a Bob the Builderringtone on the mobile phone, open up a Bob the Builder comic, and leave the whole multimedia-tasking thing to the real expert.

Pint, anyone?