Social media activity 'leads to increased internet usage'

14:00 21st May 2010

The growing number of people spending time on social media websites such as Facebook and Twitter has led to an increase in internet usage.

Research by the UK Online Measurement company (UKOM) recently found that British internet users are spending 65 per cent more time surfing the web than they did three years ago.

According to UKOM, the average internet user spends almost a whole day out of each month online.

Link aggregator for Twitter TweetMeme stated that this is because people are spending more and more time on social media websites.

Jim Monks, spokesperson for TweetMeme.com, said: "The ability to filter personal news streams will become ever more important as the 'storm of news and information publishing' continues to increase via the social media channels."

He explained that this could lead to social media website users becoming overloaded with information and therefore missing articles on subjects they would be interested in reading about.

A recent study from BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT, suggested that access to technology can lead to people being happier.

The research, which polled more than 35,000 people from all over the world, found that life satisfaction can be increased by having more access to technology.