Brits spend almost 3 hours online a day

The average Brit spent 2 hours 51 minutes per day actively using the internet at home and work during the first half of 2015, according to figures from the Internet Advertising Bureau and UKOM.

While people spend the most time online on PCs and laptops (1 hour 16 minutes, 45%), smartphones are fast closing the gap at 1 hour 9 minutes (40%), while tablets account for just 26 minutes (15%).

The data, which comes from a combination of meters measuring the behaviour of 73,000 people and thousands of sites and apps being tagged, also reveals the growing popularity of social media, which now accounts for more time online than entertainment purposes – including multimedia, video, TV, radio, music.

16.7% of all UK internet time is spent on social media sites, up from 12% two years ago, while entertainment’s share has almost halved from 22.1% to 12.4%.

Games accounts for 6% – double that of two years ago.

Unsurprisingly, social media accounts for more than double the share of mobile and tablet internet time (21.4%) than it does of desktop internet time (9.8%). Games (8.6% vs 2.3%), Instant Messaging (6.7% vs 0.8%) and News (4.8% vs 2.2%) also take up a much larger proportion of mobile internet time than desktop time.

In contrast, entertainment accounts for more than double the share of desktop internet time (18.5%) than it does on mobile/tablet (8.3%); and for email, it is over six times the share (5% vs 0.8%).

“When trying to reach consumers, advertisers can’t afford to think of time online as a homogenous entity,” said UKOM’s general manager Scott Fleming.

“The most effective digital ad strategies recognise and take into account how behaviour and mind-set differ dramatically by device.”