Net addiction
In a survey entitled "Digital World, Digital Life" market research outfit TNS asked over 27 thousand people adults aged 18 to 55 in 16 countries about their online habits.
It turns out that, on average, we spend 30 percent of our leisure time online these days. The frontrunners in this respect are the Far East, where the Chinese spend 44 percent of their spare time online, with the Koreans next at 40 percent, then the Japanese at 38 percent. The UK averages 28 percent, while Nordic countries were the least internet addicted of the survey.
Demographically it's revealed that younger people spend more time online and that students were the vocational group most active online. Perhaps surprisingly, housewives spent more of their spare time online than the unemployed. This trend was driven by the UK, where housewives spend nearly half their spare time online.
Questions concerning the importance of the Internet in people's personal lives pretty much followed the overall leisure usage trends. So while it looks like a high level of importance is placed on social networking sites like Facebook or MySpace, oddly not that much time is spent on them.
