Last updated April 12, 2019
Social media sites have topped new and old cell phones as the preferred method of communication for Australians, according to new figures. Social networking sites, as well as software such as Skype, are more preferable than cell phones as ways of staying in touch with friends and family, the results of a new study from business advisory group KPMG reveal.
The study shows that 47 percent of those surveyed do not even use cell phones or other such devices outside of the workplace, while barely 16 percent spend as much as an hour per day talking on their cellular devices. Yet, 75 percent of Australians use social media sites such as Facebook or Twitter on a daily basis, with 38 percent using them for over an hour per day.
Globally, when it comes to non-work related activity, people are also much more likely to use a computer program such as Skype than they are a cell phone. Last year, just 29 percent of those responding to the survey said they would rather use a cell phone to talk, a massive fall from the 67 percent result that was recorded three years earlier in 2008. Of the survey respondents, 64 percent say that the ideal means of voice communication is the computer, a massive rise from just eight percent in 2008.
“Given overall growth in these devices for a variety of things, such as social networking… certainly phone conversations would be dropping as a total,” says KPMG Australia partner Malcolm Alder.