Canadians Spend the Most Time Online

According to a recent study conducted by comScore, a company monitoring Internet usage, Canadians spend much more time online than citizens of other countries.

This increasing number of Canadian Internet users is mainly the result of an increasing number of older people beginning to use the Internet more frequently. Canadians spent an average of 43.5 hours online in the last three months of 2010, which is almost double the amount of time spent online by people from the rest of the 11 countries surveyed by comScore, which averaged 23.1 hours.

The study also found that among Canadians Internet users visits to political news and newspaper websites are increasing, while there has been a decline in the visits to the traditional email websites, such as Gmail and Hotmail. On average, people from Canada visited an average of almost 100 different websites during the last quarter of 2010, which is about 15 more than the US Internet users who placed second, and 42 more than the world average.

This increase of Internet use was primarily the result of people over the age of 55 starting to use the Internet more. In this age group, there has been an increase in Internet usage of 12 percent in comparison to 2009. Almost 20 percent of Internet users is now comprised of people over the age of 55, which is more than the segments of 18 to 24 year olds (10 per cent), 25 to 34 year olds (18 per cent) and 35 to 44 year olds (18 per cent).

In addition to Canada, the comScore study also examined the Internet habits of people from the US, the UK, China, Indian, France, Germany, Russia, Brazil, South Korea, and Japan.