• by Mike Bloxham , Op-Ed Contributor, May 11, 2010

Aside from air and other people, screens are probably among the most prevalent things with which we surround ourselves.

If the Kindle and the iPad -- and the ever-increasing number of other devices populating the ereader and tablet category - continue to grow in terms of market penetration and how we use them, then an increasing amount of time spent reading will transition to screen-based interfaces rather than paper-based.

Already we spend an alarming amount of time exposed to screens. The Council for Research Excellence published findings from the Video Consumer Mapping Study last year -- conducted by Ball State University and Sequent Partners -- with the goal of understanding just how much time people spend with all screens throughout the day based on one single data set. Amazingly enough, the average across all age groups was in excess of eight and a half hours of the waking day (the outlier at nine and a half hours being the 45- to 54-year-olds - perhaps because they use plenty of digital and mobile media in the workplace and still retain the legacy of the pre-Web media consumption patterns they grew up with).

There is little to suggest that the time we spend with screens will lessen or even stop growing (after all, it has often been said in the past that we'd reached capacity in our media time, only for it to increase).

But, what will change? The best we can do for the time being is find out what a few very smart media people have to say about the factors influencing change, and how they see our relationship with screens evolving over the next five years.

Rob Norman, CEO North America, GroupM:
Creativity and communication are age-old instincts transformed by technology, the magic of broadband connectivity and common protocols and beautiful interfaces. This allows everything to talk to everything else and enables the creation, capture and sharing of rich experiences. Screens substitute face-to-face experiences as movies did to the theater and television to the movies. They make real life distributable on a massive scale.

Artie Bulgrin, senior vice president, research & analytics, ESPN:
Media use is not a zero-sum game and I expect it to grow incrementally across all platforms as technology continues to improve the speed and simplicity of the experience. The key performance indicator will be time.  We consume most of these alternative digital media in what we refer to as "new markets of time" - time in our day that used to be idle or spent doing other things - commuting to work, waiting for an appointment, relaxing in the yard, etc. Increasingly we are spending more time with media at different times. Why? Because we can. To date, many of us are doing this quite a bit, but most of us just do it occasionally. This will change as a greater percentage of "users" will engage in greater "usage" - that's the needle to watch.

Jane Clarke, managing director, Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement:
The consumer electronics industry is continuing to innovate with ever-smarter screens in all sizes to meet current needs and those not yet foreseen, so the usage of all different sizes of screens will inevitably grow over the next few years.  The research to date has shown that consumers are willing to add more screens, and more total screen time, when new sizes of screens make it easier and more convenient to access content and communication anytime and anywhere.  The challenge for the industry is to measure not only the additive usage of each new screen, but the impact of content, advertising and conversations that move back and forth across screens.

Dan Hodges, head of global sales, mobile & emerging media, The Associated Press:
Every screen has its purpose. The mobile screen is mostly for snacking on content with a high frequency. It doesn't take away from time spent watching TV, and the overall time spent with screens is likely to increase - partly because screens are becoming smarter and new ones are emerging. Soon, new products will be on the market that enable us to replace fridge magnets with small screens to which we can send pictures taken at our kids' soccer games in real time. We're entering the age of ubiquitous smart screens.