Big gender gap in time spent online
Across all adult age groups, women are spending more time online – on smartphones, tablets and computers – than men – clocking up an extra 33 minutes more each day, UK’s media authority Ofcom says in its annual report. Women spend on average at 4 hours 36 minutes online, compared to 4 hours 3 minutes for men.
The gender gap is biggest among ‘Gen Z’ internet users. Women aged 18-24 are spending more than an hour longer each day online than their male counterparts – an average of 6 hours 36 minutes, versus 5 hours 28 minutes for men (+21%).
Women in the UK account for the majority of time spent on Pinterest (79%), Snapchat (66%), Instagram (64%), TikTok (62%) and Facebook (61%).
Men, on the other hand, account for the majority of time spent on Quora (70%), X (63%), Reddit* (61%), LinkedIn (60%) and YouTube (56%). [1]
“Although women in general engage more heavily with the online world, they’re more likely than men to feel they have a good balance between their screen-time and real-world activities (69% vs. 66%)”, Ofcom says.
“But they’re also more sceptical about the internet’s personal and societal value, given they’re less likely than men to think that the benefits of the online world outweigh the risks (65% vs. 70%) and less likely to believe that the internet is a good thing for society (34% vs. 47%).”
“Similarly, women are much more troubled than men about the potential for harm online. Extremism (87% vs 77%), human trafficking (86% vs 76%), suicide (86% vs 77%), female genital mutilation (85% vs 74%) and hateful or offensive content (83% vs 67%) are significantly more worrying for women than men.”
“This is echoed among teenage girls aged 13-17, who are much more concerned than boys of the same age about sexual or pornographic (67% vs 48%), misogynistic (60% vs 51%), and violent content (64% vs 52%), as well as content promoting self-harm (75% vs 59%), or excessive or unhealthy dieting/exercise (51% vs 37%).”
Men are more likely to encounter misinformation (41% vs 37%), scams or fraud (36% vs 31%) and hateful content (27% vs 24%). Women are more likely to experience unwelcome friend or follow requests (30% vs 26%), misogynistic content (23% vs 19%) and body image related content (21% vs 13%).
Findings from the report:
- Generative AI. Men are more likely than women to have used a generative AI tool in the past year (50% vs 33%). Women are more likely than men to say they don’t know what this technology is (29% vs. 19%) and more likely to say they don’t know how to use it (30% vs 23%). Women are also more concerned about the risks of using generative-AI than men (17% vs. 11%) and about its future impact on society (64% vs 55%).
- Online news. While men (49%) and women (51%) are equally as likely to visit an online news service in May 2024, the average time they spend on them varies significantly. Men spent 39% more time than women on the top 10 news services [4] in May 2024 – 4 hours 49 minutes compared to 3 hours 28 minutes.
- Dating and pornography. Men are significantly more likely than women to visit online dating sites (65% vs. 35%).
- Online men are also twice as likely to visit a pornographic service than women; 43% (10.0m) did so in May 2024, compared with 16% (3.8m) of women. Male visitors spent an average of 1 hour 44 minutes on porn sites in May 2024, while female visitors spent around an hour.
- Health and fitness. Women are more likely to visit health and wellbeing sites than men (88% vs 80%).
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