Computer keyboard. Photo credit: DeclanTM on flickr
Would you rather be checking your Facebook feed than reading this article? If so – no hard feelings – you’re certainly not alone. A report into internet usage by Nielsen media has revealed that 22.5% of time spent online in the US is accounted for by social media and blogs, compared to just 2.6% for current affairs and global news.
Now, one from leftfield, would you rather be on Facebook than have a working toilet in the vicinity? If the decision is even a little difficult, you are in the majority once more. The Daily Mail reported that when London’s Science Museum asked 3,000 people to name things they couldn’t live without: sunshine, an internet connection, clean drinking water, and a refrigerator came in as numbers one to four. Facebook came fifth, well ahead of a flushing toilet, which limped in in ninth place.
- Facebook is still the social media top dog. The Nielsen report revealed that Facebook remains by far and away the social media network of choice. It informed that 53 billion minutes were spent on the site in May 2011; Blogger, in second place, received a comparatively skimpy 723 million minutes. Nearly four in five active internet users visit blogs and social media. Steve Myers at Poynter pointed out that the apparent anti-news bias the study reveals might be skewed: “sceptical readers may note that blogs could relate to news”.
- Crazy: internet over water. The Science museum survey was conducted to run alongside an exhibition entitled Water Wars: Fight the Food Crisis. With clean drinking water coming in behind “an internet connection”, the results don’t quite align with what the curators had perhaps hoped. Exhibition manager Sarah Richardson told The Daily Mail “to say you can’t live without material things over drinking water is crazy.” If things really do go down the drain, at least we’ll be able to blog about it.
- Porn by any other name. The largest proportion of time spent online, 35.1 percent, fell under “other” in the Nielsen report. “Other”, somewhat unsurprisingly, included pornography. Other significant findings were that more women than men visit social networks, and that close to 40 percent of social media users access content from their mobile phones.
More on social networking
- The rise of Google Plus
- Student unearths Facebook iPad app
- Parents who hack their children
