• by Erik Sass , Staff Writer @eriksass1, March 11, 2014

User-generated content makes up 30% of the media content consumed by millennials in terms of time spent, at 5.4 hours per day, according to a new study from Crowdtap, Ipos Media CT and the Social Media Advertising Consortium, based on a survey of 839 U.S. adults ages 18-36.

If you do the math, that means millennials are spending, let’s see, 18 hours consuming media on an average day. (Obviously, much of that consumption is overlapping.)
 
The amount of time millennials spend with UGC is roughly the same as the time spent with all traditional media combined, including print, radio and TV, which together, take up 33% of their 18-hour media day (six hours).

Millennials also consider UGC more trustworthy than other media sources -- specifically trusting it 50% more than sources like TV, newspapers, and magazines. Meanwhile, 35% of millennials consider it more memorable than content from other sources.

No surprise, millennials are avid social media users in general, with 71% saying the use social media every day. The fact that millennials consider UGC more trustworthy than other types of content seems especially significant when it comes to online reviews.

Separate research from NewVoiceMedia published in December suggested that young adults are more likely to post negative online reviews of brands after bad experiences. Where 18% of all adults said they would go online to post a bad review and 16% would vent on social media, that number jumps to 59% among consumers ages 25-34.
 
Back in April 2013, I wrote about a survey from BabyCenter.com and comScore, which found that mothers of young children, including new and expecting moms, are more likely than the general public to use social media. Moms are also more likely to make a purchase based on social media recommendations: 59% of moms surveyed said they bought a product because of a recommendation from a parenting Web site, and 44% said they made a purchase after a friend posted a recommendation or liked a product on a social network.