Tessa LeGassick, Chief Planning Officer, Hearts United examines how media upbringing influences audience behaviour across generations and why planners need to look beyond age alone.
Despite increasingly sharing the same platforms, devices and services, Making Sense 8 shows us that younger and older audiences continue to behave differently. Adults spend 66% of their commercial media time with digital channels compared with 85% among 16–34s, and even when audiences use the same channels, their behaviours often differ.
One observation stood out to me: “As we’ve noted before, today’s 35–54s look a lot like the 16–34s of 2015 and this is a pattern that holds true in 2026.” It suggests that as people move through life stages, they don’t simply adopt the behaviours of today’s older audiences. Instead, once technological and platform change has occurred, some behaviours travel with cohorts as they age, making age alone a less reliable predictor of future media behaviour.
Age is one of the most commonly used audience variables in planning and buying, from segmentation through to activation. But age is often a shorthand for life stage, income, family structure, available time, technology adoption, cultural context and media upbringing too.
Technology clearly shapes media upbringing. Since 2015, digital’s share of commercial media time has increased from 42% to 66%. Smartphones and TV sets now each account for 34% of commercial media time among adults.
The landscape has transformed, but what is happening to the people moving through it? My childhood media consumption was largely dictated by whatever happened to be available. My sisters and I endlessly rewatched Blackadder because it was one of my dad’s VHS tapes. My daughters have access to an almost unlimited amount of content and can’t really imagine a world where something isn’t available to stream, search for or download. Those experiences, powered by technological change, shape our expectations of how media works.
Despite this change, the shape of the media day remains remarkably stable, with commercial media accounting for 68% of all media time versus 66% in 2015. What has evolved is not the need but the way content is delivered. The report highlights how “the rate of change varies markedly by age group” meaning media behaviours and planning solutions for broad reach become more complex.
In Making Sense 8:
- 16–34s spend 49% of their commercial media time on smartphones and 21% on TV sets
- 35–54s spend 37% on smartphones and 31% on TV sets
- 55–74s spend 22% on smartphones and 45% on TV sets
- Among 75+, TV sets still account for 51% of commercial media time
The report says life stage is a major part of this. Some people grew up with scheduled viewing, scarcity and broadcast-led content. Others with search, AI, streaming, social, influencers and on-demand access.
For planners, this matters because age cohorts are never fixed. The 16–34 audience of 2026 is not the 16–34 audience of 2015, just as today’s 35–54s differ from those of a decade ago. People move through these groups with different media expectations. For example, the analysis highlights that even for 35–54s – an age group dominated by family life – media time spent alone has increased by 11% from 2015 to 2026.
Behaviours migrate through the population over time rather than just converging. That’s one reason why Making Sense 8 introduces a dedicated 75+ audience, recognising that “55+” is no longer sufficiently descriptive. The same could be said for younger audience cohorts. Today’s 16-year-olds are growing up with a different media reality than today’s 34-year-olds did 18 years ago.
The reach and time-spent analysis by age group also shows why this matters for planners. These behaviours shape where incremental reach can be found, how channels are combined, and where frequency is naturally being delivered. Viewed through an all-adults lens, those differences can be hidden behind a single average, despite very different usage patterns underneath.
One of the challenges for planners is understanding not just where audiences are today but how they evolve over time. TouchPoints allows us to observe that change at scale. The data doesn’t suggest we inevitably turn into our parents. Instead, it points to something more nuanced: generations carry aspects of their media upbringing with them as they age. For planners that means looking beyond age and paying closer attention to the media environments that shaped audiences in the first place.
Tessa LeGassick is Chief Planning Officer at Hearts United
This article was first published in "Making Sense - The commercial media landscape (8th edition)" - download the free report
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Last updated 07 November 2026