Streaming services, video games and social media platforms all compete for our attention, and the battle to occupy consumers’ time is becoming more competitive. But, consumers need to fight back over this battle for our attention.

“We all have a finite number of free hours per day, and if young men stop watching TV and move to video games, that’s a problem for the TV industry,” Dmitri Williams, an associate professor of communications at the University of Southern California, said in an email.

After sleep, the average American has 17 hours a day to work a job, prepare meals and spend time on digital products like Netflix, Hulu and Fortnite.

Anna Henderson | Digital Design Editor

Consumers should start thinking more critically about the content they consume with the time that they have. It has become too easy to over-consume content because of the saturated market.

Accessing content has never been easier, which makes the decision of what to engage with more difficult. This has created choice paralysis — the idea that the more choices available, the harder it is to make a final decision.

Digital products in completely separate verticals are starting to compete with each other for our free time. It’s easy to get lost in all of the options.

And those options are still multiplying.

Williams said games such as Fortnite have begun to pull people away from watching TV shows because their friends are playing, and these games are keeping people off streaming sites like Netflix for longer periods of time.

Anna Henderson | Digital Design Editor

In early February, another free-to-play Battle Royale game exploded onto the scene: Apex Legends. Created by Electronic Arts and Respawn Entertainment, the game gathered 25 million users in just one week. Comparatively, it took Fortnite four months to hit 45 million users, according to The Verge.

During the streaming giant’s most recent earnings call, Netflix said it considers the free-to-play Battle Royale game Fortnite a greater competitor than Hulu or HBO. As of September 2018, Polygon reported that Fortnite has 78.3 million monthly players. As of January 2019, Netflix has more than 139 million subscribers, according to CNN.

Companies are producing too much content, and it’s because of the race for our attention. According to Variety, Netflix tried to put out 700 original TV shows in 2018.

Consumers should think carefully about how they choose to spend their time. Take back control from streaming companies and video games. Your time is valuable, spend it wisely.

Daniel Strauss is a senior finance major and public communications minor. His column appears biweekly. He can be reached at dstrauss@syr.edu and followed on Twitter @_danielstrauss.

Published on February 26, 2019 at 7:50 pm