Which countries spend the most time online?

People in the Philippines spend more time online each day than residents of any other country in the world, according to new research.

Social media firms Hootsuite and We Are Social compiled data from nations and territories across the globe on the use of social media and the internet as a whole. The findings, outlined in a 200-page Digital 2019 Report, reveal that Filipinos top the world internet usage index, with an average of ten hours and two minutes a day - up from nine hours and 29 minutes last year.

Brazil comes second, followed by last year’s index topper Thailand, reports CNN. The worldwide average is six hours and 42 minutes - considerably more than the five hours and 46 minutes racked up by people in the UK, which is 30th in the digital charts.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Of all the countries surveyed, people in Japan spend the least amount of time online, at just three hours and 45 minutes.

At the other end of the scale, Filipinos also put in the greatest amount of time on social media, for the fourth consecutive year, with a current daily average of four hours and 12 minutes, reports Phillippines-based news site Rappler.

However, while users across the globe are increasingly dependent on the internet, the report findings are not cause for alarm, argues Sonia Livingstone, a professor of media and communications at the London School of Economics.

She told CNN that rather than a mass addiction, soaring internet usage is more likely to reflect “the degree to which government or societal processes have gone online”, while many peoples’ jobs also rely on digital systems.

Here is the full top ten in the world internet usage rankings:

1. Philippines: ten hours, two minutes
2. Brazil: nine hours, 29 minutes
3. Thailand: nine hours, 11 minutes
4. Colombia: nine hours
5. Indonesia: eight hours, 36 minutes
6. South Africa: eight hours, 25 minutes
7. Argentina: eight hours, 19 minutes
8. Malaysia: eight hours, five minutes
9. Mexico: eight hours, one minute
10. United Arab Emirates: seven hours, 54 minutes