New research suggests that the amount of time Britons spend looking at news online has tripled over the last three years to around 22 million hours a month.
This makes looking for news the second fastest growing way to spend time online, after blogs and social networking.
The research is compiled by the UK Online Measurement Company and is based on tracking a panel of 40,000 internet users across the UK. The 22 million hours a month total equates to around half on hour per person, if it is averaged out among the total number of Britons online.
The UKOM research suggests that those Britons who are online spent 65 per cent more time using the internet in April 2010 than they did in April 2007: A total of 884 million hours, which equates to 22 hours and 16 minutes per month for every person who uses the internet in the UK.
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In terms of total hours spent online, news has increased from seven million hours a month to 22 million hours a month – the survey states. Blogs and social networks have increased from 40 million hours to 176 million hours.
Here is the UKOM breakdown of time spent online ranked by proportion of the total (With percentage change over last three years):
- 1. Social networks.blogs: 22.7 per cent, up 159 per cent
- 2. Email: 7.2 per cent, up 11 per cent.
- 3. Games: 6.9 per cent, up 15 per cent.
- 4. Instant messaging: 4.9 per cent, down 66 per cent.
- 5. Classified/auctions: 4.7 per cent, down six per cent.
- 6. Portals: 4 per cent, down 10 per cent.
- 7. Search: 4 per cent, down 3 per cent.
- 8. Software info/products: 3.4 per cent, down 36 per cent.
- 9. News: 2.8 per cent, up 84 per cent.
- 10. Adult: 2.7 per cent, down 3 per cent.
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