Brits spend almost an entire day of their week online watching Netflix and scrolling through Facebook, according to a study.
We spend a whopping 21 hours browsing the net each week with over six of those solely using social networking site Facebook.
Experts say it’s due to a fear of “missing out” on what friends and colleagues are getting up to and users tend to check the site before they go to bed.
The findings, collected by gadget insurance provider www.row.co.uk, revealed In March last year UK visitors to Facebook spent 850 million hours using its services.
Of the UK’s 32 million Facebook users, that works out to a massive 26.5 hours per visitor every month.
Zoe Cairns, Founder of ZC Social Media, said: “We spend hours scrolling through our timelines and catching up with what’s happening in our friends and families worlds.
“Checking our phones has become a regular habit with many people checking them when they first wake and the last thing they look at before they sleep.
“People feel like that have lost something so important when they leave their phone at home and they are unable to check up on the online news and what their friends are up to.
“Checking our phone is a new life habit. We have a fear of logging off and missing out with whats going on.”
The data by Row.co.uk collected from 2,000 people also revealed that the average Brit spends over 9 hours (9.28) on Google properties and 7.5 hours on Netflix each month.
UK adults are also now less likely to go online using a computer, and more likely to use a smartphone instead, with 65 per cent of Brits using their phone to surf the web.
Users spent an average of 58 hours 39 minutes each month browsing or using apps on smartphones, compared to 31 hours 19 minutes browsing on laptops and desktop computers.
There has also been a 10 per cent rise in the proportion of adults who only use smartphones or tablets to go online, and not a PC or laptop.
The research, provided by the latest media use and attitudes report from Ofcom, revealed that a majority of internet users who browse social media online say they mostly use a smartphone (57 per cent), as do a majority who go online to listen to streamed music (56 per cent).
Adults are also more likely to say they mostly use a smartphone, rather than any other device, for watching short video clips (43 per cent), for looking at news websites or apps (41 per cent) and for surfing or browsing (34 per cent).
When it comes to internet safety, it seems people are just as trusting of smartphones as they are of laptops or PCs, as 32 per cent of people agreed they would be just as likely to use a smartphone for online banking.
The majority of internet users say they have happily controlled their finances on the web. Just over eight in ten internet users say they have bought something online, while almost seven in ten say they have banked or paid bills online.
Richard Waters, from Row.co.uk, commented: “The way the UK is accessing the internet is constantly changing alongside the different device options that are available to us.
“We’ve seen an increase in the amount of insurance covering mobile phones, tablets and laptops in particular, which speaks volumes about which devices young people want to protect.”
Jodie Cook, Managing Director of JC Social Media Limited, added: “Smartphone use and Facebook use is very high and growing rapidly.
“Sharing via Facebook is addictive, releasing oxytocin which means people want to share more and more.
“The well-documented ‘fear of missing out’ means individuals also want to see what their friends are doing all the time, hence spending time scrolling.
“It’s important to remember that Facebook is simply someone’s edited show reel and not their behind-the-scenes.”
