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Adults are spending an norm of 4 hour and 20 minutes each day online across smartphones , tablet , and computers in the U.K. , consort to figure from Ofcom ’s annualOnline Nationreport dive into consumer digital riding habit . The figure is a large jump liken to2023 , when adult over 18 spend an average of 3 hours and 41 moment online , especially when you view that the dispute with 2022 was just 8 minutes .
As you may see from the table above , the norm is being driven in large part by usage among younger adults . 18- to 24 - year - old thieve on TikTok and Instagram are spending six hours and 1 minute online . That is up by 1.5 hour over 2023 , when they were online for 4 hours 36 minutes . Perhaps predictably , the over-65 bracket is drop the least time at 3 hours , 10 minute . One big question is whether younger users of today be as fighting online ( or even more ) when they become senior .
If so , that implies that social club may be slow exhibit into an all - digital existence .
The account in total stretches into 116 pages of data point and graphic . Here are a few noteworthy figures that jump out :
Two - cavalry race . Overall , there is a retentive tail of service of process that draw in interview but two figure really dominate the top of the listing : Alphabet and Meta . Together , property own by these two take up nearly half ofalltime U.K. adults spend online . YouTube is the most chat , with 94 % of all adult spending time on it at some point in the year . On modal , those visiting are spending 49 minutes viewing YouTube videos day by day .
Seventy percent visitedallof Meta ’s three large platforms — Facebook , WhatsApp , and Instagram — with Facebook / Messenger at 91 % , its highest order in terms of incursion . That is despite Facebook still being a flop among 18- to 24 - twelvemonth - olds , who expend just 15 instant on Meta ’s flagship property . Interestingly , Ofcom does n’t seem to include Google usage in is online visitations .
woman are online more than piece . Ofcom has singled out in finical some gender - base patterns in consumption . Overall , women are spend 33 minutes more online than men ( 4:36 versus 4:03 ) , and among Gen Z ( 18 - 24 ) the prison term spend is even more pronounced at 1 hour longer , Ofcom found . Some of this might have to do with the nature of what kind of content they are consuming : Females ’ preferred sites skew to societal media sites , which have been optimized and engineered to keep multitude scrolling and clicking . TikTok , as one example , ranks as the 10th most popular site for women , whereas it ’s at 16 for men .
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societal medium . The top of the societal medium pecking order persist very entrenched , with YouTube , Facebook , Instagram , and TikTok in the top four slots . Fifth is where things start to get interesting .
Reddit is the quickest growing societal weapons platform , profiting from the declination at disco biscuit - née - Twitter . Ofcom sound out that about half of the U.K. on-line grownup population , 22.9 million , were using Reddit by May 2024 , up 47 % compare to the twelvemonth before , when 33 % , or 15.6 million , say they were using it . Those numbers helped Reddit shoot both X and LinkedIn to 5th position overall among most popular societal media sites . We ’ll have to see if this is a novelty or a style , and whether new arrival confirm some of their momentum .
Chief among those right now are Bluesky and Threads . Bluesky , Ofcom note , had just 80,000 drug user in May of this year , with that figure going up to 127,000 in August , and then a sudden 263 % jump to give it 461,000 exploiter in September , the last month it tracked for this account ( which will get update with the subsequent months in the future ) . From what we have seen in the last two months in other grocery , Bluesky will likely have continued that trajectory as it suddenly started to go forth as the leading alternative to X. X is still a far way ahead , with 21.2 million users , with 6.6 million for Meta ’s Threads . Interestingly , although Snapchat gets a lot of aid among younger drug user , it ’s for the most part cut by other geezerhood grouping , leading to it being No . 10 in the list , with 9.8 million users .
Generative AIis still a largely nascent service , but for now , the indications are that valet are come out as more keen other adopters . Some 50 % of work force review have used a GenAI servicing , compare to 33 % of woman . Women also have less immediate recognition of what these service do , and those who do hump are more unbelieving of their benefits to guild and themselves , Ofcom found .
Ofcom ’s findings in this report are also importantbecause in part they become the groundwork for investigations and other oeuvre that it undertake . For exemplar , it expects to unfreeze Codes of Practice in the first one-half of 2025 for the protection of children online . To that end , it also highlight a number of areas where online subject matter and engagement are falling short in term of safety :
Although two - thirds ( 67 % ) of online adults said that “ the benefits of being on-line outweigh the risks , ” that is actually down from a twelvemonth ago , when the chassis was 71 % .
Young adults may be online more , but they do n’t seem to love that : Ofcom enunciate they “ were less potential than older people to remember they had a good balance between their on-line and offline life story , and older children were more concerned than new unity about the time they spent online . ”
Misinformation loom large as a harm , with 39 % of users 13 and older saying they had come across some as of June 2024 . Thirty percent of user aged 13 and Old said they ’d also seen content that “ made them feel uncomfortable , upset or negative . ” Both percentages are up on 2023 .
Hateful , offensive , or discriminatory content is also on the ascension , with 26 % of adults saying they have come across it online ( compared to 23 % in 2023 ) .
Younger users are rest to get online . Ofcom found that 20 % of 8- to 15 - year - olds have claimed to have a user eld of at least 18 on a societal media platform , which underscores the challenges of patrol that . “ There are indications that there are more frequent elbow grease from service to aver their day of the month of birth , ” Ofcom notes , with users designate that they are seeing more verification on ages made by the social medium sites . ( Whether these are adhere to is another question . )
Ofcom find that 35 % of users get on 13 - 17 said they had make out across offensive or “ bad ” language online , which is down on the 40 % from a year ago . Harmful subject matter related to soundbox image continue to be a problem , specially among female stripling , Ofcom obtain . That ’s a trend that social sites like TikTok are seek toproactively curtailbefore they are forced by governor to do so .
