Americans are watching TV in different ways today than they have in the past.

According to a Nielsen study, TV viewing online and on smartphones is now growing at a rapid pace, Deadline reports.

The study shows that in the fourth quarter of 2014, time spent watching video content on the Internet rose by 38.5 percent compared to the fourth quarter of 2013. That increase is despite the fact that the number of people watching content online dropped by 4.2 percent.

The most amount of time spent watching content is coming from smartphones. In the fourth quarter of 2014, Americans spent 43 hours and 14 minutes watching content on their smartphones, a 27 percent increase.

Over 121 million people in the U.S. own a smartphone. That is almost a 20 percent increase from the same time period in 2013.

The smartphone is now owned by 77 percent of cell phone owners. Asian Americans are the most likely to own a smartphone with 87 percent of them saying they own one, followed by African Americans at 83 percent.

Americans continue to subscribe to streaming video on demand services. Netflix has 36 percent of American households subscribed to their service, 13 percent subscribe to Amazon Prime and 6.5 percent subscribe to Hulu Plus. However, 24.5 percent of American households do not have broadband Internet. 

Americans making less than $40,000 per year make up for 36 percent of TV households and 21 percent of subscription video on demand access customers. Comparatively, Americans making $100,000 or more make up for only 19 percent of TV households but 29 percent of subscription video on demand access customers.

"Increased video viewing on digital platforms to both native digital content and TV-produced content, as well as the rise of SVOD (subscription video on demand) across all platforms, are changing the way we look at the consumption of traditional media," the media research company's Dounia Turrill said.

Americans still are watching TV the traditional way. On average, 40 hours per week of traditional TV are watched.