According to a recent PC World article (February, 2008), which quoted a new report by the market research firm IDC, the average Internet user spends a whopping 33 hours online each week. This number represents about half of the total time spent using all media and almost twice the amount of time we spend watching television.

Interesting, this is also eight times longer than we spend reading books and magazines, which come in at about 3.9 hours every week. One of the reasons our online time is increasing is that it’s easier than ever before to surf the Web. We can now do it from our phones, with laptops and Internet cafes, and even at Internet consoles at airports. Also, these numbers are relevant mainly for the younger generations, as the data suggests that people tend to use the media that they were accustomed to growing up.

Today’s young people were born in the Internet and text-messaging age, so they are more likely to make use of The Internet than other forms of media. The data also reveals some of the most frequently used online activities among the study’s respondents. These include using search engines (84 percent); mapping and navigation services (83 percent), personal research (77 percent), and using email (76 percent).

Sometimes when people use the internet they misspell the word or phrase that they are searching for. These spelling errors happen to everyone and Google developed a great feature that prompts users who type in a misspelled word with their possible options. One reason for the spelling errors is the difficult nature of some search terms for example the spelling of University of Phoenix as University Of Phoneix or University Of Phenix, there are many more similar misspellings that we try and help our users with on our page of
featured schools.

Interestingly, these numbers all appear to have gone up significantly since 2004, when a MARS study which used about 13,000 adult Internet users for a study, concluded that about 2/3 of the U.S. are active Internet users. The member of the study reported being online for just over one hour each day, which adds up to only 8 hours or so a week. The top activities for Internet users are emailing and chatting (by far), playing games, reading news and conducting research. Shopping and selling activities online have also increased a lot in the last five years.

Tags: Learning Technologies, Online Education