Indians spend 37% more time staring at phones than TV: Are we addicted?

Television is no more our first go-to option when it comes to entertainment as more and more Indians are using their mobile phones to explore a gamut of shows, music and videos.

Indians spend an average of around 4.5 hours a day accessing the internet on their smartphones, about 37 percent higher than the time they spend watching TV, a report by mobile advertising firm InMobi showed.

In comparison, the time spent watching television stood at three hours and 30 minutes per day.

About 95 percent of users access chat applications multiple times per day. Women are more engaged than men on smartphones - spending twice the time on YouTube and gaming.

India is the sixth largest market for mobile video ads in terms of user consumption. Cheaper smartphones, and better connectivity is driving a 124 percent increase in video ad consumption, a research by InMobi showed.

Indians begin their day with videos on their phones and between 6:30am and 9:30am is their preferred time for this activity, the report said.

Meanwhile, 9 out of 10 consumers research a product or service on their mobile and 94 percent of Indian consumers prefer using apps over a website to make online purchases.

According to InMobi, there are various reasons such as time saving option, ability to shop on-the-go, no long queues and ease of locating deals that attracts consumers towards mobile-commerce.

As data costs and smartphone prices continue to fall, mobile traffic is only set to grow in India. Swedish telecom company Ericsson said last year that data consumption would hit 18 gigabytes per month per smartphone by 2023, up from 3.9 gigabytes in 2017.

However, it may have negative implications on people's health, mostly students in the age group of 13-24.

Psychiatrists and counsellors say that the number of people being treated for mobile addiction has shot up anywhere between 75-100 percent and above in the last one year alone – and looks likely to jump multifold in coming years.