Posts
A] Digital World,
Digital Life
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Across the 16 countries surveyed we found
that respondents on average spend a third of
their leisure time online, belong to two social
networking sites and have regular contact with
16 people who they have ‘virtually’ met on the
internet. Ignoring the impact of the internet on
many aspects of our lives is just not an option
anymore. Whether it is email, e-commerce,
forums, blogs or virtual reality, eBay or Bebo,
Google Earth or Second Life, most of us are
aware of what the web has to offer. A significant
proportion of us are highly engaged with the
internet in one form or another.
--------------------------------------------------------------------Around the world, countries have welcomed in the
new digital era at various speeds and to different
degrees. Asia is rapidly embracing social media and
Europe is incorporating the internet more and more
into its daily business and personal communications,
North America has become the most vigilant when it
comes to revealing personal information online. What
all countries have in common is an overwhelming
growth in awareness of the internet and its
capabilities.
In this report – Digital World, Digital Life – we try to
capture how the internet fits into the lives of residents
from sixteen countries across the world. How digital
are their lives? How do they use the internet? Is a
digital life the same as a social life or does a social life
today require a complementary digital life? This study
takes a comprehensive look at these issues and
offers answers to these questions and many more.
We hope you enjoy reading Digital World, Digital Life
and that you find it useful.
----------------Method note: The data was collected from
TNS Global Interactive
B] A world more connected
- Fact: Internet penetration is increasing. More and more people are getting online.
- A result of this is that, as a medium, it is becoming increasingly important to us and integrating itself ever more into our daily lives.
- At the same time, we constantly hear that people are working harder and longer, making the time we spend for ourselves increasingly valuable.
- If our leisure time is precious then why globally do we spend almost a third of it using the internet? Is it because we are making more efficient use of our valuable time by using the internet, so allowing us to fit more into our lives? Or is it because online life itself has become a key leisure activity?
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We found no conclusive evidence that an increase in leisure time increases the amount of time we spend online. We looked at online behavior in terms of how much leisure time people had during the week. Respondents who stated that they felt they only had 1 to 2 hours of leisure time on a week day spent the same proportion of their leisure time online (30%) as respondents who stated that they enjoyed between 7 to 8 hours of leisure time on a week day. As one might expect, younger people under 25 do spend more of their time online; well over a third -36% - of our sample say they spend more than 30% of their time online. However, there are quite a few major differences across the world in this respect. Chinese respondents aged under 25 spent half (50%) of their leisure time online, whereas in the US, under 25’s spend around a third (30%) of their leisure time online. There also appears to be large country variations in which specific groups of people spend a great deal of their time online. Take the students in our survey as an example; they spend 39% of their time online, a higher percentage amongst our respondents than any other group. Perhaps this is no surprise as this group tends to be in the younger age categories – they have the time and the need to spend significant time online. However, if one looks at another distinct group –housewives – there are large differences around the globe.
Amongst our Asian respondents, housewives typically spend less of their leisure time online than either students or other general population. However, in the US, housewives in our study stated that they 38% of their leisure time online (more than any other group) and in the UK this was even pronounced with housewives stating that they spent almost half (47%) of their leisure time online. This trend can be further explained by looking at the rapid expansion of online food shopping, particularly in the UK, Germany and France. UK online shopping
expenditure now tops £1 billion at month.* If the world is to take the lead from countries such
as Japan and Korea, that are seen as innovative pioneers in the online world, then we can expect to spend even more time online. In those countries, respondents said they currently spend around two fifths of their leisure time online, although – as this report will underline later – their usage of the internet is quite different to the rest of the world. On the other hand, people in Scandinavia and the Netherlands spend between 15% and 20% of their leisure time logged on. This compares with the average across all countries surveyed, which is approximately 30%.Whichever way you look at this, online life is clearly popular. People spend a large proportion of time online, with nearly half of our respondents logging on several times a day from home and three quarters doing so at least once a day. Whereas Indian people are in track using internet in actually all field, &in percentage India is behind china, US etc..
expenditure now tops £1 billion at month.* If the world is to take the lead from countries such
as Japan and Korea, that are seen as innovative pioneers in the online world, then we can expect to spend even more time online. In those countries, respondents said they currently spend around two fifths of their leisure time online, although – as this report will underline later – their usage of the internet is quite different to the rest of the world. On the other hand, people in Scandinavia and the Netherlands spend between 15% and 20% of their leisure time logged on. This compares with the average across all countries surveyed, which is approximately 30%.Whichever way you look at this, online life is clearly popular. People spend a large proportion of time online, with nearly half of our respondents logging on several times a day from home and three quarters doing so at least once a day. Whereas Indian people are in track using internet in actually all field, &in percentage India is behind china, US etc..
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Internet use has become a major part of our lives.
In the pages that follow, we will look at how people use and perceive the internet.
In the pages that follow, we will look at how people use and perceive the internet.
Our aim is to provide further understanding of the increasingly digital nature of our lives
C] Mobile internet (just don’t call it WAP)…Looking to the future, it is encouraging for the
mobile operators and an industry that has
invested heavily in data connectivity that already
1 in 10 of respondents surveyed connects to the
internet at least once a day via mobile handsets.
Again, looking to Asia for adoption trends, we
can see huge growth prospects. Among our
Japanese and Chinese respondents, over a
quarter of people access the internet over mobile
connections frequency of once a day. But take
away these two Asian giants, and the overall daily
mobile connectivity figure worldwide drops to 5%.
