Time spent on work, education and domestic activities

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While the previous section outlined broad differences in time use between Internet users and non-users, Table 2 presents a more detailed breakdown of work, educational, domestic and personal care activities, and reveals estimates that include an adjustment to account for some of the social and demographic differences among Internet users and non-users. For many of these activities, respondents have limited choices regarding their participation (for example, work, school and child care), while for others, they may have more discretion regarding the amount of time they spend (for example, some domestic work activities and sleeping).

The data reveal that Internet users spent significantly less time on a number of daily tasks and chores than non-users during the diary day. For example, heavy Internet users spent almost 40 minutes less time on domestic work than non-users. As shown in the adjusted figures, when comparing users with similar characteristics (i.e., age, sex, education, number of children and time at work), the difference dropped slightly. However, heavy Internet users were still found to spend significantly less time (33 minutes) on all domestic activities. Observations were quite similar for moderate users, except that time differences were not as large. In fact, after adjustment, the differences in time spent by moderate Internet users and non-users on cooking and washing up and certain other household activities were no longer significant.

Table 2
Comparison of time spent on work, school, domestic and personal care activities

Internet users spent more time on education-related activities, although after adjusting for other factors (including time of year), differences were not as large. Nonetheless, moderate users were likely to spend more time on school-related work than both heavy Internet users and non-users.

While Internet users spent about the same or more time than non-users attending to basic needs such as meals, washing and dressing, they seemed to spend less time on other aspects of personal care, including sleeping, relaxing, resting and thinking. Lower sleeping times of varying degree among Internet users have been documented elsewhere (Fu, Wang and Qiu 2002, Pronovost 2002, Robinson, Kestnbaum, Neustadtl and Alvarez 2002), but this finding is not consistent among researchers. However, the idea that Internet users might cut back on sleeping and relaxation activities raises questions about their perceptions of time and levels of stress, a topic that will be examined later.