More Canadians Using the Internet: Survey

A recent survey shows that Canadians are heavy internet users, ranking second only to the United States in terms of the proportion of people accessing the net. The Canadian Internet Project (CIP) said 56 percent of all Canadians log on for at least seven hours a week, with the average user spending 13.5 hours online per week.

The CIP is the Canadian branch of the Worldwide Internet Project, which has a consortium of research centres in 25 locations around the world. The first of its kind, the survey endeavoured to discover not only how often and who uses the internet, but how Canadians are integrating the internet into their daily lives.

“We’re pretty much close to the top of the world ranking,” says Fred Fletcher, one of the authors of the report. “People are using it for everything from work purposes to personal contact to accessing information more efficiently, especially information outside the mainstream, and I think that’s positive. Except for people over 65 in Canada it’s become part of people’s everyday life.”

Other survey findings include:

• A majority of low-income Canadians have access to the internet • Almost three quarters of respondents reported using the telephone less often, with email being the principal activity of all internet users • Twice as many net users surf for information as oppose to entertainment • Fifty two percent of Canadians—the largest percentage worldwide—reported making online purchases • Three quarters of Canadians own at least one computer

Canadians between the ages of 18 and 24 comprise ninety percent of those who regularly log on, with the number starting to drop off in the 45 and older age group. Seventy five percent of men versus 69 percent of women use the web. Only 36 percent of respondents said they believe information found online is credible and accurate.

But Heather Menzies, author of No Time: Stress and the Crisis of Modern Life, says there may be a downside to the digital revolution. A survey Menzies conducted on 100 faculty members from six Canadian universities found that a third of them linked their memory problems and concentration difficulties to computer use. Many reported that the overwhelming use of email adversely affected their interactions with colleagues and students, making communication less personal.

“The efficiencies of the internet are wonderful because it means that the world is literally at our fingertips and we can do a whole host of transactions very quickly and very efficiently,” says Menzies. “But I worry when people are substituting emails for phone conversations….because it invites a more superficial level of engagement. It’s a much more mechanical and transactional kind of thing as opposed to communing with the other person.” So where does all this surfing leave television viewing? Most people polled said internet use did not affect the amount of time they spent watching TV, but overall the study showed that television watching appeared to decrease somewhat with users watching TV about 3.7 hours a week less than non-users. Still, TV continues to be the main source of entertainment for both users and non-users. The CIP also said that on the whole, Canadians appear to use the internet to supplement rather than replace more traditional media such as magazines, newspapers, and television.

Menzies says that while the advent of television was an interference with social interactions between people, the TV usually only existed in one room of the house whereas computers are now miniaturised so that they’ve become “an everywhere phenomenon.”

She believes the efficiency the computer provides is a double-edged sword because that efficiency allows people to do even more work when they may be already overloaded.

“Forty percent of Canadians describe themselves as chronically stressed out. That’s a horrifying statistic. There’s a whole cachet associated with being plugged in and on the go, with cell phones and computers... multi-tasking to the point that the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing because they’re both doing different things.”

However, Fletcher says that internet use will continue to grow and believes Canada will soon catch up to other countries when it comes to mobile uses of the internet.

“A high proportion of internet use in Japan is actually from some sort of mobile device, especially among young women. So that may be happening to us in a few years.”