Mouse Potato

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What Does Mouse Potato Mean?

Mouse potato is a term for someone who spends a lot of leisure time or discretionary time sitting in front of a screen connected to the Internet. It is a modern take on the older term “couch potato,” that refers to someone who spends a lot of time in front of a television.

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Techopedia Explains Mouse Potato

Experts point out that the terms “couch potato” and “mouse potato” are related to an overarching struggle between broadcast providers that use network television, and those that use online platforms. One of the biggest differences between the two is that the online model offers much more opportunity for two-way communication, interactivity and audience involvement. By contrast, television, which evolved decades earlier, is simply a passive medium. The industry is now seeing the online and television models converge in new and interesting ways, where the television programming of the future may end up being purchased over the Internet, then watched in a web browser. The evolution of smart TVs is also changing the game on how consumers would be labeled, and how they would choose to spend their time receiving broadcasted programming.

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Margaret Rouse
Technology expert
Margaret Rouse
Technology expert

Margaret is an award-winning writer and educator known for her ability to explain complex technical topics to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles in the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret’s idea of ​​a fun day is to help IT and business professionals to learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.