The networked life takes a toll on your heart
When consumers turn to their smartphones to find information quickly, they want an instantaneous response, according to Ericsson Consumer Lab’s study on user reactions to varied levels of network performance during a smartphone experience.
The study revealed that under time constraints, delays in Web page load times and video streaming can be as stressful as watching a horror movie. Participants’ responses to initial load time (time-to-content) and pauses due to re-buffering while watching videos were assessed by measuring cognitive load, an indicator of stress.
Delays in loading Web pages and videos under time pressure caused mobile users’ heart rates to rise an average of 38 per cent. Six-second delays to video streaming caused stress levels to increase by a third. To put that in context, the stress incurred is equivalent to the anxiety of taking a maths test or watching a horror movie alone, and greater than the stress experienced by standing at the edge of a virtual cliff. Once a video begins, an additional pause can cause stress levels to increase dramatically.
In the fourth quarter 2015, mobile data traffic grew by 65 per cent compared to the fourth quarter of 2014 and is now anticipated to grow at 45 per cent annually through 2021. Video streaming remains the largest mobile data traffic generator.
The growth in video traffic is boosted mainly by the growing availability and popularity of video content services, devices with larger and higher resolution screens, high performing networks enabling a better experience and changing user behaviour.
Mobile video drives the mobile traffic since evolving smart devices with larger screens and higher resolution, enabling better picture quality for streamed video that causes video content increasingly appearing as part of other online applications, including news, advertisements and social media.
Social networking is second only to video in driving traffic growth. People share more online now than they have ever done before. With the increased penetration of smartphones, it is very convenient to access social media platforms.
Consumers are increasingly participating in and sharing information on multiple social media platforms. With an expected net addition of 3 billion smartphone subscriptions by the end of 2021, many more consumers will have easy access to social networks via apps and web browsers. More people communicate using text than voice calls. Many are also used to instantly sharing photos and videos via social networks. For example, over 70 per cent of smartphone owners say they share personal photos regularly and have an audience which sees what’s been shared. About 46 per cent are active on more than one social network.
Accumulated social networking traffic over the next 6 years is forecast to be around 180 Exabytes (EB), which is comparable to every person on earth spending around 35 minutes on social media every day, or a total of more than 200 billion photos viewed every day.
Meanwhile, according to Ericsson ConsumerLab Analytical Platform, consumer trends in Thailand are leading towards a networked lifestyle with 56 per cent owning more than one connected devices, while globally it would be 82 per cent; 50 per cent are active in more than one social networks, while globally it is 55 per cent; and 33 per cent participate in the sharing economy, while globally it is 34 per cent.
