The Attention Landscape · established evidence
The 2013 Crossover: The Year Digital Media Passed Television in America
A single year is unusually easy to point to in the long migration of attention away from television: 2013. Reporting in April 2014, the research firm eMarketer found that in 2013, US adults spent an average of 5 hours 46 minutes a day with digital media, more than they spent with television, for the first time on record. Mobile growth drove most of the shift. That figure has become the most-cited marker of the digital-over-television crossover, and it holds up on both sides: it is a real, directionally solid finding, and it is also a vendor-modeled analyst estimate rather than a government diary or a metered panel, a distinction worth stating plainly before using the number in a rigorous argument. A decade later, the same crossover logic recurred inside television itself, when streaming's share of TV usage overtook cable's own historical record. What the 2013 date mainly proves is how much faster attention moves than the budgets built to follow it.
The specific claim, and who made it
The 2013 crossover comes from a specific, traceable source: eMarketer (now Insider Intelligence), reporting in April 2014 that US adults' average daily time with digital media, 5 hours 46 minutes, had surpassed their average daily time with television for the first time. The finding was widely covered under headlines like "Mobile Time Spent Surpasses TV," which names the mechanism as well as the milestone: it was mobile's growth specifically, not desktop internet use, that pushed digital past the television total.
This is the reason 2013 functions as a clean historical marker rather than a vague trend. A single research organization, using a consistent year-over-year methodology, identified a specific calendar year in which one category of time use exceeded another for the first time in its own series.
The caveat this figure needs
A rigorous reading of the 2013 crossover has to state plainly what kind of number it is. eMarketer's "time spent with media" series is a modeled analyst estimate, an internal synthesis of multiple inputs, not a raw government time-diary or a metered panel reading. That does not make the finding wrong; it makes it a different kind of evidence than, say, Nielsen's panel-based Gauge or the government-run American Time Use Survey, and it should be labeled as eMarketer-modeled wherever it is cited, rather than presented as an unweighted fact with no methodology behind it.
This caveat is not a technicality. Figures mirrored from eMarketer in trade press and cited without attribution can read as more precise than the underlying methodology supports. Stated precisely, the 2013 crossover claim is this: a respected vendor's modeled estimate, consistently reported and widely relied upon in the industry, found this specific inflection point, and it should be cited as such.
Why a government data set cannot simply confirm the same number
It would be reassuring to cross-check eMarketer's figure against the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics' American Time Use Survey, the only nationally representative, government-run time-diary data set covering daily media and leisure activity. But the two are not directly comparable, and understanding why is itself part of reading this crossover correctly.
ATUS is a 24-hour recall diary that records only a respondent's stated primary activity; it does not capture secondary or simultaneous activity, with one narrow exception for secondary childcare. That means ATUS systematically undercounts multi-device and second-screen attention relative to eMarketer's modeled estimate or Nielsen's metered panel data, both of which count concurrent exposure. ATUS recorded US adults' average TV time at 2 hours 46 minutes a day across 2013 to 2017, a figure that measures something structurally different from eMarketer's combined digital-media total. The two data sets can both be right and still not be mergeable into one number.
What actually drove the crossover: mobile, not desktop
The mechanism behind 2013 was specifically mobile growth, and the milestones that followed within a few years confirm the same driver from independent sources. In March 2015, comScore reported that US mobile-only internet users first exceeded desktop-only users, 10.8 percent mobile-only against a shrinking desktop-only base, a user-composition metric rather than a time-spent one. In October 2016, StatCounter reported that mobile-plus-tablet usage share, measured by page views, exceeded desktop worldwide for the first time, a different metric again.
These are two separate, non-identical milestones from two separate measurement firms, and conflating them with each other, or with the 2013 eMarketer crossover, is a common error. What they establish together is not one crossover date but a multi-year sequence, 2013 in time-spent, 2015 in mobile-only user composition, 2016 in global page-view share, each documenting the same underlying mobile-driven shift from a different angle.
The evidence
Key findings, with their sources
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In 2013, US adults spent an average of 5 hours 46 minutes a day with digital media, surpassing their average daily time with television for the first time, driven mainly by mobile growth.
established eMarketer/Insider Intelligence, "Mobile Time Spent Surpasses TV," reported April 2014, insiderintelligence.com/newsroom; content also indexed at emarketer.com.
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By 2024, US adults spent an estimated 12 hours 37 minutes a day with total media, of which digital media made up 63.7%; within that, mobile alone reached roughly 4 hours a day, connected TV about 2 hours 15 minutes, and traditional linear TV about 2 hours 55 minutes.
established eMarketer, "US Time Spent With Media Forecast 2024," emarketer.com/content/us-time-spent-with-media-forecast-2024.
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US adults' average TV time in the government-run American Time Use Survey was 2 hours 46 minutes a day across 2013 to 2017, and had fallen to 2 hours 36 minutes by 2024, the lowest level in the survey's history to date; ATUS records only a respondent's primary activity and therefore undercounts multi-device attention relative to eMarketer's or Nielsen's figures.
established U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, American Time Use Survey annual news releases and "Beyond the Numbers," bls.gov/opub/btn/volume-7/television-capturing-americas-attention.htm.
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In March 2015, US mobile-only internet users first exceeded desktop-only users; in October 2016, global mobile-plus-tablet page-view share exceeded desktop for the first time, two distinct milestones on two distinct metrics that are often conflated with each other.
established comScore, "Number of Mobile-Only Internet Users Now Exceeds Desktop-Only in the U.S.," comscore.com/Insights/Blog; StatCounter Global Stats, press release, gs.statcounter.com/press.
Reference
Glossary
- Time-spent estimate
- A modeled analyst figure, such as eMarketer's, synthesizing multiple data inputs into an estimate of average daily time spent with a media category, distinct from a raw diary or metered panel reading.
- Time-diary methodology
- A data-collection method, used by the American Time Use Survey, in which respondents recall and log their activities across a 24-hour period, typically capturing only the stated primary activity.
- Metered panel
- A measurement method, used by Nielsen, in which a representative sample of households or devices is instrumented to record actual usage, rather than relying on self-report or recall.
- Crossover point
- The specific, dateable moment one category of attention or usage first exceeds another in a consistent data series, as distinct from a general trend of one category rising and another falling.
Straight answers
Frequently asked questions
When did digital media overtake television in the US?
By eMarketer's widely cited "time spent with media" series, 2013 was the year US adults' average daily digital media time (5 hours 46 minutes) first surpassed their average daily television time, reported in April 2014 and driven mainly by mobile growth.
Is the 2013 crossover figure a hard government statistic?
No, and this matters for accurate citation. It is a modeled analyst estimate from eMarketer, not a raw government time-diary or metered panel reading. The government-run American Time Use Survey measures something structurally different (primary-activity-only, undercounting multi-device use), so the two data sets should not be merged into one number.
What actually caused the 2013 crossover?
Mobile growth specifically, not desktop internet use in general. The pattern is confirmed by two later, independent milestones: comScore's March 2015 finding that mobile-only internet users first exceeded desktop-only users, and StatCounter's October 2016 finding that mobile-plus-tablet page-view share exceeded desktop worldwide, each measuring a different angle of the same mobile-led shift.
Did advertising budgets move as fast as attention did in 2013?
The time-spent data shows the crossover happened at a specific, dateable point. Trade commentary at the time and in the years after widely observed a lag between where attention had already moved and where budgets remained, though this pattern is an interpretive reading of the broader shift rather than a single cited statistic, and should be treated as such.
Provenance
Sources
- eMarketer/Insider Intelligence, "Mobile Time Spent Surpasses TV," reported April 2014, insiderintelligence.com/newsroom (established, vendor-modeled)
- eMarketer, "US Time Spent With Media Forecast 2024," emarketer.com/content/us-time-spent-with-media-forecast-2024 (established, vendor-modeled)emarketer.com
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, American Time Use Survey annual news releases and "Beyond the Numbers," bls.gov/opub/btn/volume-7/television-capturing-americas-attention.htm (established, primary government data)
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, American Time Use Survey user documentation, bls.gov/tus (established, methodology)bls.gov
- comScore, "Number of Mobile-Only Internet Users Now Exceeds Desktop-Only in the U.S.," comscore.com/Insights/Blog (established)comscore.com
- StatCounter Global Stats, press release, gs.statcounter.com/press (established)
Every figure above is attributed to a real, dated source and tagged with its evidence tier. Where a claim could not be verified to a primary source, it is not stated as fact.