19/05/2010

Brits Spend 'One Day A Month Online'

A survey of net habits has revealed that British web users are spending up to 65% more time online than three years ago.

Launched by the UK Online Measurement company (UKOM), the survey discovered that the average surfer spends around 22 hours on the net every month.

It will come as no surprise that the majority of this time is dedicated to social networking sites and blogs, which take up nearly a quarter of users' time online.

Instant messaging (IM) has seen a steady decline of 5% mainly due to the rapid growth of social networking. E-mail however, is still healthy and eats up 7.2% of online time compared to 6.5% three years ago.

The most popular online activities remain social networking, communication and playing games, with a steady growth of 4.7% going to online auctions and classified adverts.

Online news has also seen a 2.8% growth compared to just 1.5% three years ago.

The survey shows that people are spending more time on news sites than on adult content.

A spokesman for UKOM, Alex Burmaster commented: "It is a bit of a digital myth that everyone online visits adult sites. We divide the internet into 85 different sections so the fact that adult content is in the top 10 shows it is still one of the most heavily used sectors."

Commenting on social networking he added: "It is like an organism, feeding off itself and getting bigger. People are plugging more and more of their lives into it."

(BMcN/GK)

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