30 November 2005
The British spend more time surfing the web than any of our European neighbours apart from the French, according to research – and the broadband revolution has much to do with the increasing amount of time spent online by the public.
European internet usage as a whole has increased by 17 per cent this year, says the European Interactive Advertising Association (EIAA) – equating to an average of ten and a quarter hours per week spent online per person.
The average British user tops this to spend 11 hours a week online, with the French surfing the internet for 13 hours over the same length of time. Plenty of British web surfers fall into a higher category of user though – a quarter spend over 16 hours a week on the internet.
Figures for broadband users across Europe were even more remarkable, showing that the service's ease of access makes it more usable, and the EIAA said in a statement: "The figures for broadband users are even more staggering (than the overall results), with nearly a third spending more than 16 hours per week online."
Internet usage may have soared, but this was largely at the expense of television use, which only increased by six per cent. Radio and newspaper figures saw encouraging rises, but the time spent reading magazines fell by seven per cent.
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