3 Sep 2013
British people spend an average of 11.3 hours per week online at home; this has been roughly stable since 2007 (average 10.9 hours a week at home). By contrast, use of the Internet at work has decreased from 7.3 hours per week to 5.5 hours per week over the same period. Use of the Internet at school has not changed since 2007.
In 2013, we added the category of using the Internet ‘on the go’, and users indicate spending over two hours per week online when they are mobile. The continuing centrality of the home and the rise of Internet use on the go are two clear trends to note and watch for in 2015.
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Total hours spent online. This is a number everybody wants, but one that we don’t supply. Why? There is a measurement problem. We find that people are very bad at accurately estimating the amount of time they spend, whether it is time spent on social network sites or total hours spent online a week. This is quite apart from the problem that people may not actually realise they are online, for example when when using certain features on a mobile phone. We don’t think the numbers that other organisations collect are accurate or reliable measures.