Free time online   |  March 31, 2009  

When we want to relax, we often hit the PC

By Peter Wolchak

As a society we don’t have a great deal of free time, but when we do manage to grab some downtime we spend about 30 per cent of it online, according to a TNS Global study.



Online activities include:

> using search engines to find content (81%)
> reading news (76%)
> online banking (74%)
> looking up the weather (65%)
> researching a product or service (63%)

For downtime activities, these are all quite practical. More frivolous pursuits, however, ranked poorly, including:

> watching a video clip (51%)
> downloading music (37%)
> visiting a social networking site (33%) 
> visiting an adult-only Web site (19%)
> downloading a podcast (8%). 





And it comes as no surprise that checking online weather forecasts is more common in Canada than in any other surveyed country.



Other findings:

> people 25 and younger spend 36% of their leisure time online
> Chinese respondents 25 or younger spend half of their free time online
> Canadians of the same age claim to spend 39 per cent of their spare time online.

More details are at: www.tns-cf.com/news/08.12.02-digital_life.pdf



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