1.11 Media / Technology Use

The media landscape is rapidly changing. Whereas 20 years ago people would have said the screen they spend the most time looking at would be a television screen, the proliferation of cellular phones and computers in our day-to-day lives has dramatically changed our media viewing habits. While a great deal of research has assessed the media habits of the average American, far less research has looked at the media habits of those involved in a fandom with a strong online component such as the furry fandom.

To this end, we asked furries to indicate how frequently they engaged in 9 different digital media technologies1.

Furries and Media Use

Media Less than Once / Day Once a Day or More More than Once / Hour
Mobile phone (not for messaging or calling) 17.2% 82.8% 50.1%
Facebook or other social networks 25.0% 75.0% 29.4%
Sending / receiving e-mails on any device 32.7% 67.3% 18.6%
Browsing the Internet on any device 5.3% 94.7% 53.2%
TV / Movies on a computer 48.2% 51.8% 21.6%
Text messages on a mobile phone 18.9% 81.1% 43.2%
Interact online with someone you’ve never met in-person 27.5% 72.5% 43.4%
Playing digital games 27.7% 72.3% 38.2%
Watching TV / movies on a TV set 61.5% 38.5% 15.8%
The results suggest that furries spend a great deal of time using Internet-enabled mobile devices for the purpose of texting, browsing the internet, playing games, and using social media. By comparison, furries spend far less time watching television (whether on a television set or on a computer), a trend that opposed what media researchers observed in youth a decade or two ago. Going forward, we hope to compare these results to a demographically comparable group to determine whether these rates are higher among furries due, in part, to the fact that so much of their interaction with the fandom is Internet-based.

References

  1. Anthrocon 2017 Study