Has the time come to switch off? The Covid-19 pandemic fueled an increase in the amount of time people spent online. But this trend appears to have fizzled out in 2022, resulting in the biggest drop in time spent online in a decade.

Internet users could be seeking to limit the amount of time they spend online. At least, so suggests recent research from GWI Core. After analysing the time spent online daily between 2013 and 2022, among 2,595,435 Internet users aged 16 to 64, the report identified a 13-minute decline in time spent online in 2022 compared to 2021. This amounts to the largest drop in the last 10 years.

Internet users spent six hours and 43 minutes a day on their online activities in 2022, including all connections (smartphone, computer and tablet). On average, an adult is awake for about 15 hours a day, the GWI report says, implying that an internet user spends almost half of their waking hours on online activities.

Still, 2022 is the year with the lowest amount of time spent online since 2019, when an average of 6 hours and 41 minutes of time spent online daily was recorded.

“While more people spent more time online during Covid, the daily average is now almost on par with pre-pandemic figures. It’s a potential sign that we’ve reached a kind of internet saturation point, but to get a better sense of this in action, you need to look at the situation worldwide,” reads the GWI Connecting the Dots report.

A decrease visibly observed around the world, notably explained by the increase in cybercrime, but also by the resumption of a more active lifestyle post-pandemic: “Even in Internet growth markets, time spent isn’t increasing as it used to. In the Middle East & Africa, and Latin America, average daily time spent online has fallen by 20 minutes and 34 minutes respectively since 2021 - and this remains the case among younger audiences too. Covid, obviously, has a part to play in this; people have less free time now, and fewer are using the Internet day-to-day than they did in lockdown.”

 - AFP Relaxnews