22 years of our lives are spent online, claims study

Perhaps rather depressingly, Brits will spend the equivalent of 22 years, one month and four days of their lives online.

A study of 2,000 adults found the typical week will see 59 hours – the equivalent of more than two full days – spent using the internet.

This amounts to 128 days a year, or 22 years over an adult lifetime.

During a week, seven hours and 55 minutes is spent streaming TV shows and films, three hours and 10 minutes on video calls and four hours and 42 minutes listening to music online.

A further four hours and 57 minutes a week are dedicated to social media while one hour and 55 minutes is taken up with online life admin.

And an average of four hours and 36 minutes is spent online gaming.

For those whose job involves them being online, the equivalent of 47 days a year are spent using the internet for work purposes.

It also emerged that this reliance on being online means more than three-quarters of adults use two or more devices each day to stay connected, including mobile phones (59 per cent), tablets (37 per cent) and smart TVs (28 per cent).

But the huge amount of time they spent online leaves 57 per cent of people worry about being ‘at risk’ of online fraud or being hacked.

This may be because 59 per cent have accepted cookies on websites, 36 per cent use the same password for multiple accounts and 25 per cent have saved bank details to a device.

The research was commissioned by NordVPN, a Virtual Private Network service which provides secure online browsing.

Says Daniel Markuson, digital privacy expert at NordVPN:

 “The pandemic has changed the way we use the internet, as our lifestyles have been forced to change our online behaviour too.”

“With streaming now more popular than ever and social media having become an inevitable part of our daily lives, internet users look for ways to pass the time at home while sacrificing their mental health, sleep, or healthy screen time.”

The study also found more than half of those polled admitted they couldn’t imagine going a whole day without being online.

And the average time people start browsing the internet each day is 8:52am – and they don’t log off until 21:25pm.