According to data from an annual Ofcom survey, adults spend an average of 4 hours and 20 minutes online every single day on smartphones, tablets and computers Internet nation report a dive into consumers’ digital habits. This number is a giant jump compared to 2023when adults over 18 spent an average of three hours and 41 minutes online, especially considering the difference compared to 2022 was only 8 minutes.

As you possibly can see from the table above, the average is basically influenced by usage amongst younger adults. People aged 18-24 addicted to TikTok and Instagram spend six hours and 1 minute online. This is 1.5 hours more compared to 2023, after they were online for 4 hours and 36 minutes. Perhaps predictably, people over 65 would spend the smallest amount of time at 3 hours and 10 minutes. One of the most important questions is whether or not today’s younger users can be as energetic on the Internet (or much more) as they develop into seniors.

If so, because of this society could also be slowly moving into a very digital existence.

In total, the report includes 116 pages of information and graphics. Here are some notable numbers that jump out:

Two horses racing. Overall, there’s a protracted tail of services that attract audiences, but two names dominate the top of the list: Alphabet and Meta. Combined, properties owned by these two people take up almost half of the time British adults spend online. YouTube is the most visited channel, with 94% of all adults spending time on it in some unspecified time in the future during the 12 months. Visitors spend an average of 49 minutes watching YouTube videos every single day.

70% visited the three largest Meta platforms – Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram – with Facebook/Messenger (91%) being the highest in terms of penetration. This is despite Facebook continuing to be a dud amongst 18-24-year-olds who spent just quarter-hour on Meta’s flagship site. Interestingly, Ofcom doesn’t cover the use of Google during online visits.

Women are online more often than men. In particular, Ofcom highlighted certain gender-based consumption patterns. Overall, women spend 33 minutes more online than men (4:36 compared to 4:03), and amongst Generation Z (18-24), time spent online is much more pronounced – 1 hour more, he said Ofcom. Part of this may increasingly have to do with the kind of content they view: the sites women prefer tend to gravitate toward social media sites which were optimized and designed to encourage people to scroll and click on. For example, TikTok ranks as the tenth hottest site for ladies, while it ranks sixteenth for men.

Social media. The top of the social media hierarchy stays very entrenched, with YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok occupying the top 4 spots. Fifth, things start to get interesting.

Reddit is the fastest-growing social media platform, making the most of the decline of X-née-Twitter. Ofcom said that by May 2024, around half of the UK’s adult web population, or 22.9 million, used Reddit, an increase of 47% on the previous 12 months when 33%, or 15 .6 million said they use it. These numbers helped Reddit catapult each X and LinkedIn to fifth place amongst the hottest social media sites. We can have to see whether that is latest or a trend and whether the latest arrivals maintain a few of their momentum.

The most significant of them currently are Bluesky and Threads. Ofcom notes that in May this 12 months Bluesky had just 80,000 users, by August this had risen to 127,000 after which there was a pointy 263% increase to 461,000 users in September, the last month covered in this report ( which can be updated in the following months). From what we have seen over the past two months in other markets, Bluesky is probably going to proceed on this trajectory because it suddenly begins to emerge as the leading alternative to X. X remains to be far ahead of us, with 21.2 million users and 6.6 million for Meta threads. Interestingly, while Snapchat has a robust following amongst younger users, it is basically ignored by other age groups, which puts it at number 10 on the list with 9.8 million users.

Generative artificial intelligence it is basically a fledgling service, but for now the whole lot indicates that men are increasingly willing to use it as the first users. About 50% of men surveyed used GenAI compared to 33% of girls. Ofcom found that girls are also less aware of those services, and those that do are more skeptical about the advantages they convey to society and themselves.

Ofcom’s findings in this report are also necessary because, in part, they develop into the basis for the investigations and other work that he undertakes. For example, it expects to publish codes of conduct on protecting children online in the first half of 2025. To this end, it also identifies numerous areas where online content and engagement fall short in terms of security:

While two-thirds (67%) of adults who use the Internet said that “the benefits of being online outweigh the risks,” this is definitely down from a 12 months ago when the figure was 71%.

Young adults could also be using the web more, but they do not seem to prefer it: Ofcom found that they were “less likely than older people to think they’d an excellent balance between their online and offline lives, and older children were more anxious than younger spent on the Internet.”

Misinformation appears to be harmful, with 39% of users aged 13 and over saying they were exposed to it in June 2024. 30% of users aged 13 and over said additionally they saw content that “made them feel uncomfortable, upset or negative.” Both percentages increased compared to 2023.

Hateful, offensive or discriminatory content can also be on the rise, with 26% of adults saying they’ve encountered it online (up from 23% in 2023).

Younger users lie to connect to the Internet. Ofcom found that 20 per cent of individuals aged 8-15 say they’re aged 18 or over when using a social media platform, highlighting the challenges of controlling this issue. “There are signs that services are checking date of birth more often,” Ofcom notes, with users indicating that they’re checking age more often on social media. (Whether they’re followed is one other matter.)

Ofcom found that 35% of 13-17-year-olds said they’d encountered offensive or “vulgar” language online, down from 40% a 12 months ago. Ofcom said harmful content related to body image continues to be an issue, especially amongst teenagers. This is a trend that social media sites like TikTok try to actively curb before being forced to accomplish that by regulators.