Steve Hewlett writes: A survey instigated by Google UK and released last week might have led you to think that the answer to the above question was a resounding yes. "Web overtakes TV as Britain's favourite activity," gushed the Google press release.
On the face of it the evidence seemed pretty compelling. A weighted sample of 1,100 people were asked to estimate how long they spent on various activities. Based on this, we were told, the average Briton spends around 164 minutes online every day - that is the equivalent of 41 days a year - as opposed to a mere 148 minutes watching television. The message was clear. With broadband connections going through the roof and internet usage rising, the end was nigh.
But hang on a minute. First, Ofcom's published data on average TV viewing among UK adults has it at 21.6 hours a week (185 minutes a day) and if you add the weekly average of 3.2 hours of video and DVD viewing you get a grand total of 212 minutes a day. But what question did the Google survey ask its respondents? Initial suggestions that the data was confined to internet usage outside office hours (and therefore a direct competitor to TV viewing) turned out to be wrong. The question actually asked was, "How much time do you spend on the internet each day 'for personal use'." Now far be it from me to suggest that anyone ever uses the internet at work for anything other than company business, but in the words of one TV research expert, the survey's conclusion was "utter bollocks".
