British spend more time online

THE AVERAGE BRIT spends 22 hours and 15 minutes on the net each month, according to the UK Online Measurement company (UKOM).

This is more than 65 per cent more time online than three years ago, according to a survey of net habits. More than a quarter of that time is wasted on social networking sites sending silly messages such as "John thinks you will be interested in grouting" and inviting you attend a meeting on badgers in Scunthorpe in a few hours.

Apparently this has caused instant messaging to die out. Three years ago 14 per cent of online time was spent using IM but that has fallen to just five per cent.

However the use of e-mail is healthy and accounts for 7.2 per cent of time online compared to 6.5 per cent of time three years ago.

In a statement, Alex Burmaster of UKOM said that the Internet was built on the three pillars of networking, communication and playing games. He totally missed porn.

The use of online classified adverts and auctions is creeping up the usage table, accounting for 4.7 per cent of time. Online news has also seen strong growth with 2.8 per cent of online time spent browsing such sites, compared to just 1.5 per cent three years ago. µ