Housewives & Chinese Dominate The Web

Author	Gordon Kelly
Published	2nd Jan 2009

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There's nothing like lies, damn lies and statistics - but who doesn't enjoy the odd quirky survey?

In a report of more than 27,000 people across 16 countries market information group TNS has turned out a rather interesting one today about our web use. Here are some of the highlights:

China spends by far the largest amount of its leisure time online averaging a whopping 44 per cent with South Korea second at 40 per cent. The UK was rather more midtable at 28 per cent (clearly we still enjoy the pub the great outdoors) with Scandinavians - famed for their ultra high speed broadband connections - surprisingly taking four of the bottom five spots with Norwegians, Swedes, Finns and Danes giving up just 22 per cent, 18 per cent, 16 per cent and 15 per cent respectively. Obviously they find distractions elsewhere (I can think of a few).

As the so-called Web 2.0 and social networking sites continue to explode another interesting stat is how many of us have met someone online before meeting them in real life. Here results were turned on their head with Germans coming top at a huge 76 per cent, closely followed by the Scandinavians and then China right at the bottom (and by a 16 per cent margin) at just 40 per cent (good old censorship). The UK was in the bottom third at 58 per cent.

Lastly, think the web is still being dominated by teenage boys? Apparently not. UK housewives were found to spend 47 per cent of their leisure time online according to TNS putting them way ahead of even students (39 per cent) and the unemployed (32 per cent). So that's why the dinner is never ready and the house is a mess... ;)

*Ducks and runs for cover*

Links:
via BBC
TNS

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Andrew Violet said on 4th January 2009

I may be pointing out the blatantly obvious but surely it is no surprise the Scandinavians spend much time on the internet as they do not have to spend time waiting for pages to lo... more

Gordon said on 4th January 2009

@Flash - agreed. I think that is the danger of any form of polling however.
@Andrew - it actually points out the opposite though, Scandinavians surprisingly spend some of t... more

Andrew Violet said on 4th January 2009

@flash good point
@Gordon sorry i didn't make that clear and its certainly not the opposite - what I meant that an hours surfing/downloading for me would probably take... more