A report from TNS, a Global market information and insight group, has revealed that the UK public are spending a record amount of time online, with 28% of users surveyed stated that they will spend their leisure time connected to the internet.
Students and the unemployed are widely regarded to be the users who would clock up the most time online, but these users have been eclipsed by housewives, spending 47% of their free time browsing the internet.
Users are also now using the internet to carry out their everyday activities, such as paying their bills (66%) or accessing their banks accounts online (76%). The most common reason to go online was to use a search engine (80%), while 75% of users were going online to access a news site. The variety of these tasks suggest that the internet is fulfilling multiple functions for many users as they attempt to carry out all their necessary tasks in the comfort of their own homes.
Activities traditionally seen as ‘fun’ such as entering chat rooms are much less common now, as the internet has become a vital element in the daily life of many people.