Most people believe the time they spend with "friends" on social media is as valuable as the time spent with them in person, according to a report by Deloitte.
The fourth annual Media Consumption report said that, for the first time, more than half of respondents – 51 per cent – held the view.
"Social media is ubiquitous and omnipresent; we use it to interact with friends, share our favourite content, discover new content and ultimately broadcast our opinion on anything and everything," the report said. "It's no surprise that our digital lives and 'real' lives are intertwined."
The view was most strongly held by "leading Millennials" aged 26 to 31, two-thirds of whom agreed that social media time was as valuable as time in person.
But it's not clear from the report whether respondents felt this way equally about personal as well as professional relationships.
While respondents from all age groups said they used social media predominantly to keep up with friends and family, about 20 per cent said they also used it to connect with colleagues. Just 10 per cent said they used it to set up in-person meetings with friends.
A survey of followers of The Age – on Facebook, of course – found people roundly critical of the idea.
"Real time catch-up is better," said one follower, Luke Jenkins.
"Nothing beats a cappuccino and a catch-up face-to-face," said another, Abby Lopez. "Facebook catch-up is only good for ungodly hours when discussing wedding plans with your bridesmaids because neither of you can sleep."
A third follower, John Waver, said he felt his real-life friends behaved differently on Facebook, and he had had "so many real life confrontations over it".
"So no it's nothing like a chat over coffee in the real world," he said.
The report also found that 80 per cent of respondents in Australia use social media, with 59 per cent using it daily.
The nuance of these points spread predictably across age groups. Nearly 40 per cent of those aged 68 and above said they were not on any social media networks while 83 per cent of leading Millennials, and 79 per cent of "trailing Millennials", aged 14-25, said they used social media daily.
But some of the trends in the report were less obvious: despite the range and diversity of media available today, the humble act of reading has been steadily increasing in popularity for the past three years.
And while the decline of newspapers has continued apace, more trailing Millennials – the youngest group in the survey – said they got their news from the printed paper than did their slightly older leading Millennial peers. They also said they turned to social media for news as much as they did television.
