Have you ever wondered how much time you are spending on your favorite social networking site? I did and decided to run a casual poll, without claim of scientific value, and found that those who responded to my inquiry were likely to spend about as much time facebooking or twittering as they spend shopping.
Disclaimer: Let me just stress that the following numbers are the result of a casual survey among my personal contacts and that the results may vary significantly depending on different survey groups, depending on different characteristics of survey participants including, but not limited to, gender, profession and age. This very personal survey was conducted among my contacts in Twitter and Facebook accounts, yielding 384 responses. Given the gazillions of Twitter and Facebook users, the margin of error may be significant.
Recent Internet usage data published by Nielsen Netratings told us that the time spent on Facebook is soaring, up nearly 10% sequentially and now exceeding 7 hours per month.
Really? I am not sure what you think, but I was scratching my head over this one. Seven hours would translate into less than 15 minutes per day on average. If I think about the fact that I see people now tweeting while they are on a treadmill in the gym and checking Facebook status messages virtually anywhere, I found this number to be highly unlikely.
And at least as far as my network is concerned, the average time spent on Facebook every day came out to be 50 minutes, with females having a tendency to spend well more than 1 hour day on Facebook (1 hour 23 minutes), while males claimed to be much closer to an average of 35 minutes. If we assume the average of 50 minutes, then you would spend 25.2 hours on Facebook every month or 12.6 days per year. If you were to use Facebook at this rate between the ages of 13 and 70, you would be handing Facebook 718.2 days of your life, or nearly 2 years.
On the high-end, females responded with usages of up to two hours per day, resulting in a theoretical life time usage of 4.7 years. The average for females was about 3.2 years. Males came in at 1.4 years. Interestingly enough, 61% of respondents said that they do not consider Facebook a waste of time as they gain value by keeping up with their friends, co-workers or even by using Facebook as a business tool.
What about Twitter? The average time spent on Twitter was 1 hour and 2 minutes per day among those who actually own and actively use Twitter. Of the 384 respondents, all claimed to have Facebook accounts, but only 279 were active Twitter users. On average, males seem to spend considerably more time on Twitter than females, 1 hour and 46 minutes per day versus 51 minutes. A similar share of my respondents, 58%, said that Twitter is a useful tool that can save time by scanning for information or keep up with friends.
At least for those who respondent to my survey, it means that females will spend 2 years of their life on Twitter and males are likely to spend close to twice that. If you add it up with the Facebook data, then it seems that about 73% of the individuals of my network had both a Facebook and Twitter account. Combined, Facebook and Twitter could take up to 5 years of your life, if you were to use these tools between the ages of 13 and 70, if the usage remains consistent – and, of course, your usage volume is similar to that of the average in my network.
The number of years over a life span is a bit abstract, but here are a few more numbers. courtesy to British researchers. You are likely to spend 1 or 2 years in your life exercising (females vs. males), 2 or 1 years shopping, 3 or 1.5 years cooking, 13 or 10 years watching TV, 8.5 or 10 years working, 5.5 or 4 years on the phone and 6 months having sex. Just in case, and if you are wondering, I also asked whether their social networking activities had a negative effect on their family life. 34% said that they believe they are spending too much time on Facebook or Twitter, and 19% admitted that there has been a negative effect on their family life.
