A study of more than 27,000 web users in 16 countries has shown that the Chinese spend the largest fraction of their leisure time online.
The survey also showed, however, that UK housewives spend even more of their free time online – a surprising 47%.
A total of 27,522 people aged 18 to 55 years old were interviewed online by TNS Global Interactive in the following countries: Australia, Canada, China, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea, Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States. 2,500 were surveyed in the UK. The questions focused on online behaviour and, interestingly, also raised the issue of trust in traditional versus online media.
The average respondent in China spends 44% of their leisure time online, nearly three times the amount of the average Danish respondent.
On average across all countries, under-25s spend 36% of their leisure time online; in China, under-25s claim they spend 50%.
In the UK, a breakdown by occupation shows striking differences in the responses; students spend 39%, more than the unemployed (32%) but still far less than housewives.
As for media and other information sources, in the UK online news sites are second only to friends as the primary source of trusted information; 40% of those surveyed said they considered online news a “highly trusted” medium.
The UK was noticeably much less trusting of print media, with only 23% counting newspapers as highly trusted – roughly the same fraction who considered the Wikipedia site as highly trusted. At the top were Finnish respondents, who were some three times more likely – 69% – to describe their newspapers as such.
31 December 2008 14:15