You Spend Nearly a Whole Day Each Week On the Internet (cnet.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNET: Since 2000, our time spent online each week has steadily increased, rising from 9.4 hours to 23.6 hours -- nearly an entire day, according to a recent report by the USC Annenberg Center for the Digital Future. The internet has become an integral component of our home lives as well, with time spent rising more than 400 percent over that period from 3.3 hours to 17.6 hours each week, according to the report, which surveys more than 2,000 people across the U.S. each year. The center's 15th annual Digital Future Report illustrates the internet's dramatic evolution since 2000 from a secondary medium to an indispensable component of our daily lives -- always on and always with us. It also comes as many fear for the future of the unlimited internet we have largely taken for granted over the past two decades. The report also found that the internet has had a dramatic impact on how we get our news. News consumption for all ages went from a print-to-online ratio of 85-15 in 2001 to a near even 51-49 in 2016.

Comments

And it is worth it

[wisebabo]

I am semi-retired and despite the fact that I now live in Vietnam, the internet (now spelled with a small "i" I think), is THE only way I could possibly live outside of one of the great centers of learning in the world. I can (kinda) keep up with my previous field (3D computer graphics), my hobbies (3D printing, scuba diving, technology) and my new field (BioTech, Genetics).

It is not perfect, it is not easy to meet people without traveling great distances (a company where I am a board member on required me to travel literally halfway around the world to Baltimore for a meeting). Still, it makes living in a developing country possible for someone like me because I have fiber to my apartment! Sure beats paying an insane amount for rent in somewhere like NYC or silicon valley and I avoid the colossal rip-off in America they call the healthcare industry (if you live more than half the year outside the country you are exempt from the rules). 17.9% of GDP on medical expenses? More than twice the cost of the next closest country? Americans really are stupid sheep, (and I am one!).

Finally, and I should admit this, it allows me to live somewhere where I am much better off than the average (financially). Many studies have shown that it isn't absolute wealth that makes you feel better, it's RELATIVE. Hence the Japanese fable:

A genie came and told a farmer that he could have anything he wanted; with the condition that his neighbors would get twice as much.

The (supposedly wise) farmer replied: "Destroy half of my crops"

I'm not proud of this but I am (a) "wise babo". (Bonus points if you know what "babo" means)

Define "on the internet"

[jenningsthecat]

TFA is sparse on detail. Given the rise in popularity of music streaming, Netflix, and online shopping, I would think a LOT of the time "on the internet" is what in prior decades would have been spent watching TV, listening to radio, playing albums on various media, or in the local mall. And if they're basing their figures on total backbone traffic then the numbers will be skewed even more by things like the IoT.

Of course, I can also believe that the amount of time spent watching TV and listening to music has increased as a result of the internet's reach and ubiquity. Then there's the whole social media thing - probably a WAY bigger time sink than dumb telephones ever were.