Britons on broadband spend 50 days a year online

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Apparently we’re a nation of Netaholics. Not only has broadband taken off in a huge way, but the amount of time that we’re spending on the Net has also grown massively, to the point that one survey said that we spend 50 days (one-seventh) of each year online.

That’s according to USwitch.com who said on average we spend 23.5 hours online per week. Though a recent Ofcom said that only 12% of broadband users spent over 25 hours per week, with the majority spending 12 hours per week online.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the USwitch survey is closer to the truth, particularly as it measures activities including listening to online radio, which can be a background task.

The helpfully titled "General surfing" is the main activity that people
are engaged with online, at nearly 8 hours per week, followed by
playing online games (4.5 hours), emailing (3 hours), downloading
film/trailers (3 hours), listening to radio (3 hours), downloading
music (2 hours), and making phone calls (1.5 hours)

This won’t correlate exactly to popularity – for example I’d expect
music downloads to outnumber video downloads, but the latter takes
proportionally longer.

Even so, it’s an interesting reflection on our growing love affair with the high-speed Internet.

How much time do you spend online in an average week, and what do you  do (apart from read Tech Digest, of course)?

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Andy Merrett
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