Americans Spend 23 Hours Per Week Online, Texting
Staying up-to-date on emails, social media and other means of online communication is a bigger time requirement than people may realize: New research has found that the average user spends 23 hours a week emailing, texting and using social media and other forms of online communication.
That number represents nearly 14 percent of the total time in a week. All that time is taking a toll on users, a new eMarketer report found. However, 54 percent of survey respondents said they have tried to decrease their reliance on technology in the past year in favor of more in-person contact. That number is only set to grow, with 62 percent of web users in the United States saying they hope to be able to decrease tech usage in the coming year so they can communicate face-to-face.
Despite those efforts, over the past year, users have increased the time they have spent using social networks, emailing, watching online videos, playing online games and reading or writing blogs. Additionally, time spent each day on online radio, newspapers and magazines has stayed the same over the past year.
[The Facebook Friend Request Employees Dread]
Email is the biggest time consumer, the researchers found. Respondents said they spend nearly eight hours a week checking emails. Respondents also said they spend nearly seven hours a week on Facebook and five hours a week on YouTube. Moreover, users spend nearly the same amount of time each week on Google+ and Twitter.
Users are checking those platforms with varying frequency, though, the eMarketer report found. More than 75 percent of users checked email, texts, Facebook and Instagram at least one time a day. Other new platforms are growing in popularity as well.
"Photo-focused sites, particularly suited to mobile, seem to be especially popular," the eMarketer report said. "Instagram saw 70 percent of users logging in daily, and the relatively new Snapchat was just behind, with 67 percent of its users logging in daily."
Two-thirds of users also said they check YouTube once a day, while nearly 60 percent check Google+ daily. Just 40 percent of LinkedIn users check the site daily, but nearly half check it several times a week.
"Even as Web users report a desire to disconnect, and discussion circulates about Facebook users decreasing time spent, it remains to be seen whether social users will follow through on that promise to log off, or perhaps simply translate their time spent on social to the sites that best suit their communication needs," the eMarketer report said.
This story was provided by BusinessNewsDaily, a sister site to LiveScience. Follow David Mielach on Twitter @D_M89. Follow us @bndarticles, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on BusinessNewsDaily.
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