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The Internet Communications Network Technology

You Spend Nearly a Whole Day Each Week On the Internet (cnet.com) 58

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.
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You Spend Nearly a Whole Day Each Week On the Internet

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  • Newbies (Score:4, Funny)

    by liefer ( 5008787 ) on Tuesday January 23, 2018 @07:48AM (#55984445)
    Lol a day per week spent online? Casuals... Try a week per week
    • by KHKw2k ( 5148547 )

      that sounds far more accurate

      • by Anonymous Coward

        Exactly. I spend about 8 hours online per day just for work.

    • Re:Newbies (Score:4, Informative)

      by infolation ( 840436 ) on Tuesday January 23, 2018 @10:43AM (#55985453)
      It depends on the definition of 'on the internet'.

      Your average person is connected, and broadcasting information about their life, to the internet whether they realise it or not. Maybe technical people on Slashdot are aware of that, or take countermeasures to prevent it, but the vast majority of people are communicatating personal data with other networked machines via a personally identifiable device throughout the day (and often night).

      Taking into account smart TVs, wearables, alexa equivalents, networked vehicles, net-connected power monitoring, phones etc, measuring 'on the internet' as equivalent to screen-time seems false right now.
      • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        Let's see...

        YouTube: 3 hours/day
        Googling work stuff: 30 minutes/day
        Slashdot: 13 hours/day

        Accounting for sleep (4 hours/day) and let's say 30 minutes/week for personal grooming I pretty much live on Slashdot.

        By the way, does anyone know if you can get keyboards with a re-enforced F5 key? Mine always seem to wear out in a few months :-(

        • If you get one of the no-shit bad-ass keyboards, they come with replaceable key-switches. You could then replace your F5 key-switch whenever it wears out. These keyboards are in the $200 range from what I remember, and probably more.

    • by antdude ( 79039 )

      Yep. I still use it in my sleep! :P

  • And it is worth it (Score:4, Interesting)

    by wisebabo ( 638845 ) on Tuesday January 23, 2018 @07:52AM (#55984451) Journal

    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)

    • by fisted ( 2295862 )

      the internet (now spelled with a small "i" I think)

      It's an internet but it's still the Internet. You'd use lowercase when talking about a different set of interconnected networks.

      Now if you'll excuse me, I have to be a blast at a party somewhere.

    • i don't think your case is representative. The problematic usage of internet is when you're not living in isolation at all but give priority to the screen over the person next to you.

      (Bonus points if you know what "babo" means)

      . I have no idea, I don't know Korean.

      • Bangkok is an hour away and has absolutely world-class healthcare at about 1/5th to 1/7th of the cost of western private healthcare.

        Singapore is also very good, but not as cheap as Thailand.
  • by Anonymous Coward

    Nope. I am an addict. I even eat in front of internet.

  • by jenningsthecat ( 1525947 ) on Tuesday January 23, 2018 @07:52AM (#55984455)

    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.

    • by zifn4b ( 1040588 )

      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.

      Ikr?? I mean my IoT fridge is connected to the damn internet.

    • "Then there's the whole social media thing - probably a WAY bigger time sink than dumb telephones ever were." I don't buy that, because I remember the arguments between me and my sister over who got to use the second phone line (me for modem use to dial into an old BBS or her to yak with her friends) going completely nuclear on a regular basis. Mind you, it was YEARS after my parents originally got her the second phone line that I started trying ti dial BBSes. They did that so her constant phone usage wo
  • Well I say: You spend one day week posting stupid articles to slashdot
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • by HalAtWork ( 926717 ) on Tuesday January 23, 2018 @08:47AM (#55984623)

    I spend about 20 minutes a day to get caught up on a few things (hobbies, news), otherwise only get important notifications from family members should anything happen and that's it.

    I used to spend a lot of time, but it was not productive, so I scaled it back. I found that I would mostly get caught up in some fluff or trivia that wouldn't affect my life for the better. At the end of the day I wouldn't have accomplished much or furthered myself in any way. Now it's not like I don't have fun, but now my fun is more active and engaging rather than passive and mind numbing.

    Sometimes I will look up a word in a dictionary or fact on wikipedia or a wikihow to help me with an activity or repair should I find the need and that's the only time I will go out of my way.

  • Just don't tell my boss.
  • Much better now.
    "You Spend Nearly a Whole Day Each Week On the Internet"
    (Subject line has a max of 50 characters)

    • I would expect a whole day each week off the internet would much closer to reality for most of the /. readers and that 50 or more hours is work related.

  • You gotta pump those numbers up those are rookie numbers!
  • The internet is just a big pipe for lots of stuff ... music? Web pages? Streaming video? Email? Social media?

    So 1/7 of a day per day, for most of my reading and video and music consumption and remote communication? Not too bad ...

  • I spend nearly a day every day using the internet. That's my job now.
  • by zarmanto ( 884704 ) on Tuesday January 23, 2018 @10:28AM (#55985313) Journal

    a - "Wow... 23.6 hours per week; that's just unbelievable, ya know?"

    b - "Yeah, no kidding. That should totally be per day."

    a - "What?"

    b - "What?"

  • 6 out of 7 days wasted. I can do better.
  • I spend 1 day on the internet every day. :D If you're only getting one day a week, you're doing something wrong, or you have a real life.

  • Wrong. I spend almost two whole days on the internet every day.

  • In a completely unrelated study, scientists calculated people spend over 23 hours a week, and this is a scientific term, "polishing the ol' bayonet."

  • 8 Hours a day, 5 days a week.

    8*5 = 40

    / If my employer is reading this, that was just a joke.

  • Articles like this (and gameplay, etc) seem to assume more is bad. "We never did this before, so why now?" Implicity rejecting peoples intelligence, or at least their ability to choose. Assuming everything was perfect before ...

    I reject such negativity. Barring error, I believe people will choose correctly for themselves, and a few selected counter-examples do not justify total population control, euphemisticly called "regulation".

  • I spend probably eight "whole days" each week on the Internet.

    Some of us have real jobs.

  • The Internet used to be a metaphor for the great profusion of the world's knowledge instantly at your fingertips.

    These days, "on the Internet"—in the context of a hapless, hang-wringing headline—can only mean one thing: disregulated, dopaminic discursion loops, aka social media, YouTube "fail" videos, and "whatever happened to that slutty celebrity one-shot-wonder from the 1970s with the fat ass" click bait (news flash: you'll never believe).

    On the Internet as in on drugs.

    Nevertheless, if one sp

  • Fuck off with your shit clickbait headlines, thanks.

He has not acquired a fortune; the fortune has acquired him. -- Bion

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