The days when families huddled in silence round the TV are a thing of the past. A typical scene today would be children shouting excitedly over their games consoles while mothers look for bargains on the internet and fathers struggle to catch a few words on the radio - with a TV contributing in the background.

The latest snapshot of the communications market by Ofcom, the regulator, reveals that what it calls media stacking - the simultaneous use of multiple media - has hit the home.

Almost 90 per cent of people aged 25 to 34 say they have dabbled with some other form of media while watching TV or using the internet. More than a third of all ages say they have surfed the net while watching television and almost half say they have listened to the radio or watched TV while online.

Peter Phillips, partner for strategy and market development at Ofcom, said: “This is about people wanting to make the most of their time. It is a sensible reaction by people to the huge amount of choice in their lives.”

It is the first time that the regulator has measured the phenomenon. “People clearly feel very comfortable doing it - for adults, they are thinking, ‘this programme interests me, but I'm not fully engaged, so I'll do more than one thing at once' whilst for teenagers, they can be online, messaging a friend to say, ‘did you see that bit?'” Mr Phillips said.

The emerging trend is increasingly important to broadcasters, who are trying to develop programmes that will prompt viewers to switch to their websites while on air, and to advertisers, who are worried that viewers are paying less and less attention to their on-screen and on-air promotions.

In total, people in the UK spent an average of seven hours and nine minutes a day using communications services in their leisure time, an increase of six minutes from 2002, yet the overall household spend on internet, mobile, radio and television has fallen.

Internet use has increased from six minutes a day in 2002 to 24 minutes last year, but the time spent watching television has also grown, scotching predictions that new media would displace the old. Britons spent an extra two minutes a day in front of the box last year, compared with 2006, taking the total to 218 minutes, although they watched six minutes less than in 2002.

Mobile phone use, helped by ‘bucket tariffs' offering more bundled minutes, has doubled in the past five years, to ten minutes a day in 2007. Total talk time on mobile phones is expected to overtake fixed line telephone use in 2011, on current trends.

People spend an average of £93.63 a month on telephone, internet and television - and the sector is one area where prices continue to fall. The cost is down 4.4 per cent since 2004.

On a green note, Ofcom says that more than half of households leave set-top boxes on standby. If everyone switched them off instead, it would save the electricity needed to make 80billion cups of tea.

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