Survey: Some Britons spend 12 hrs per week on social networks

Britain's addiction to its daily social networking fix appears to be intensifying. Social network fanatics in the UK spend an average of 12 hours per week on these sites, while a particularly avid minority (12 per cent of those surveyed) remaining logged on for at least six hours per day, making social networks a bigger draw than that classic time-waster, the telly.

The survey was sponsored by Badoo.com, yes, a social network site. But the findings certainly jibe with other recent pieces of research into Britain's love affair with sites like Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, Flickr and, evidently, Badoo (which claims 12.9 million registered users). The addiction has its costs.

Last month, a survey of corporate IT specialists concluded that social networks are a threat to UK competitiveness. According to leading tech executives, social networks cost companies £6.5 billion per annum, calculated in lost productivity and questionable bandwidth usage required to keep our friends and contacts informed on our latest mood swings and whereabouts.

Badoo is calling it the "social itch," in which users are "repeatedly drawn to check their social online status". Only 25 per cent of respondents said they could go an entire day without checking in on their online status.

An expensive itch, indeed.

Comments

[Clive Parker]

I check Facebook every couple of days, never at work.