After almost 2 years of health crisis, we can largely affirm that digital entertainment has transformed our habits, our leisure and our access to culture, to information and at times has even saved us from the ambient depression!
Should we be afraid of it? Should we be happy about it? Should we oppose it to the more traditional, outdoor, collective, face-to-face leisure activities whose virtues cannot be denied?
SVOD, online music, video games, audio & digital books… 83% of Internet users estimate that in 2020 they had access to cultural content from the Internet and nearly 75% of them have a paid digital subscription.This figure has obviously exploded with the COVID-19 and its growth prospects would make many sectors pale in comparison.
You have a passion? It has its own App!
In the last few years, many services have been developed to meet the expectations and new consumption patterns of users. Once the doors have been kicked in around SVOD, video games or online music, which are developing rapidly, new entrants are offering innovative, premium services that deserve to be mentioned:online meditation with Petit BamBou, school support with Digischool, youth services with Bayam or Benshi, sports coaching, audio or reading series with Sybel or Doors, online comics with Izneo, and more.e online with Izneo or digital books, audio books with Youboox… in short, the services are more and more numerous and allow us to satisfy our leisure or our thirst for knowledge without lifting our nose from the screen.
The time we spend doing something, we don’t spend it doing something else! When we are glued to our screens, we are not on a tennis court, at the theater or diving into the latest Asterix comic book… So is digital leisure killing “traditional” leisure, at the expense of what digital leisure has taken from our time?
Answers in a few figures
In 2019 – yes let’s stay on comparable periods – with Covid having totally upset the balances:
- Cinema had its best year in 50 years with over 213 million admissions
- The “Live Show” Theater, festival, concert has seen a 9% increase compared to 2014
- The book market will experience a very slight decline in 2020 after a 5% increase in 2019
- The number of members of sports federations increased by nearly 7% between 2010 and 2018
- International tourism has seen uninterrupted growth between 2010 and 2019.
The numbers speak for themselves
The digital tool is quite extraordinary, the technology and services developed by publishers are exceptional and offer a very addictive quality of service, so I think that this time we spend on our screens comes (rather) to the detriment of all thoseI think then that this time we spend on our screens comes (rather) to the detriment of all those moments we used to spend previously “doing nothing”, thinking, reflecting and at times being bored… a time that is certainly precious and necessary.
But today, you have 2 minutes in front of you, you take out your mobile to scroll Facebook or read L’Equipe, you have 15 minutes, you make yourself a Netflix mini-series or you turn on your Deezer playlist… anywhere, anytime.
So I don’t think we should oppose “digital” and “physical” today, but rather see it as a necessary complementarity that we need to develop.Rather, I see it as a necessary complementarity that we must learn to control and master, but above all to adapt to.
We must also trust the user, who must be educated from a very young age, who must be accompanied in his or her uses, but who will be able to distinguish between his or her social, relational and exchange needs, which he or she will continue to develop, and his or her own needs.He will continue to develop, and his very specific, qualitative digital activities – perhaps volatile and individualistic at times – which will respond exactly to his desire and his need to be satisfied at a given moment. The symbiosis of the two worlds and not their opposition will be the women and men of the 21st century.
